I just felt like I wanted to make a plea to other churches. A few years ago we created a position on our staff called church planter in residence and I think it’s one of the best staffing decisions we’ve ever made.

We get a motivated staff member for 1-2 years. And they function like a utility player in baseball. They have their hands in everything! And then we send them out to plant a church and we continue paying them a stipend. Here is what is so healthy about that: we’re always in the process of planting churches!

Now here is the challenge we face: we’ve got dozens of church planters who would love to come and do a CPR at NCC, but we don’t have the financial model to pull it off. I’d love to have a dozen church planters on staff all the time! But we have to figure out how to make that work financially. We’ll keep working on it, but I want to challenge emerging churches to consider adding a church planter in residence position to their staff! So many church planters are looking for a place to get their feet wet. They want to plant, but they need to be in a church system for a couple years!

Imagine a thousand churches with a thousand church planters in residence!