Kansas needs

As a district we currently have no churches in Kansas. There is some history behind why we don't, but my prayer is that we plant churches across the state of Kansas. There are many other great detonations working in Kansas, but with only 22% attending (American Church in Crisis) a church on any given Sunday I believe there is room for ConvergeHeartland. Here are city over 15,000 and outside of Kansas City. (We have church in the Kansas City Metro area)

Kansas
Olathe – 96,000*
Overland Park – 146,000 *
Leavenworth – 35,000
Topeka – 122,000
Lawrence – 80,000 *
Emporia – 26,000
Manhattan – 44,000 *
Hutchinson – 40,000
Salina – 45,000 *
Wichita – 344,000 *
Derby – 17,000 *
Hays – 20,000
Dodge City – 25,000 *
Liberal – 19,000 *
Garden City – 28,000
Great Bend – 15,000 *
Newton – 17,000 *
Pittsburg – 17,190 *
* Indicates growth in the community.

Introduction Letter

To help us pray and plan for our “Guiding Coalition” meeting, January 6th at Faith Baptist, I have listed a few items that lay a ground work for our time together.

Converge Heartland Church Planting Vision: Converge Heartland is planting Gospel Centered, Missional Focused, Kingdom Minded churches that reproduce themselves.

We hold the following values:
- All things are done with a biblical foundation
- We are called to evangelize
- We are called to reproduce both ourselves and our churches
- God draws people to Himself, but has chosen to use us in that process.
- Every community needs a gospel witness

The following link will take you to a Google map that lists all the locations of our churches in Converge Heartland. (http://www.google.com/maps/ms?ie=UTF8&hl=en&msa=0&msid=107790881940368398936.00044c3c376991f016b34&ll=43.277205,-98.481445&spn=13.018275,27.751465&z=6) This will allow you to see where we have churches and where we do not have churches. You will notice we have no churches in Kansas, yet Kansas is part of our district. If you see a community that you want to see a quick demographic picture you can use the following link (http://www.city-data.com/) It is very helpful in giving growth patterns for communities.

Here is the basic agenda for our meeting on January 6th.
- Introduction of each other
- Prayer
- Needs in our area
- Biblical principles and examples that apply
- Starting foundation of a strategic plan
- Assignments as needed
- Determine next time to meet and where

Here is a challenge given by Gary Rohrmayer for each district to consider.
ConvergeUSA is asking the district CP leaders to invite every church in their region to enter the resolution to multiply by committing to one of these:
- By faith our church desires to ignite a new church within 5 years.
- By faith our church desires to ignite a new campus congregation
- By faith our church desires to ignite a network of churches (3 or more in 5 years)
- By faith our church desires to ignite a church multiplication center (5 or more in 5 years)

Why this blog

The purpose of this blog is to develop a strategic plan for planting Gospel Centered, Missional Focused, Kingdom Minded church in ND, SD, NE and KS. There is a group of six guys that are working on this, but want it available for input by more than one to put ideas down so we can pray and consider ideas between meetings.

The first question that I have is what are the biblical principle of strategic planning specifically about church planting? The second question goes with the first, what are biblical examples of how churches were planting in the New Testament? Please add you comments because your input is critical.