Every church has a lifespan – the average church gets about 40 years. Occasionally, that gets extended. That was The Summit Church’s story. Our church was founded in 1962, but had been in decline before we experienced revitalization around the gospel. That was about ten years ago, and now we have a second lease on life.
We want to leverage the gift that God has given us, which is why we have set a God-sized goal of planting 1,000 churches by 2050. One day the Summit will cease to exist. But the gospel will move forward, because we multiplied ourselves by planting churches that plant churches.
Over the last 8 years, we have planted 16 churches in the United States. We began in 2004 by planting Youngstown Metro Church in Youngstown, Ohio. And earlier this year we sent out our most recent plant, Redeemer City Church in Baltimore, MD.
Seven of those churches have been planted in the last two-and-a-half years, when we launched a church planting residency to intentionally train leaders to plant gospel-centered churches. We’ve sent out over 100 people from our congregation as part of those church planting teams.
By God’s grace, none of those plants have failed, and most of them are thriving. This past Easter, nearly 3,500 people attended one of these church plants, and—even more importantly—53 people were baptized.
God is moving to build his church. Perhaps even more exciting, we’ve begun to see our first generation of plants becoming church planting churches themselves. Two of the 15 new churches were not planted directly from the Summit Church, but from one of our plants (like church grandchildren!). We recently launched the Summit Network to support and catalyze this vision of planting churches that plant churches.
Our Church Planting Pastor, Mike McDaniel, recently sent me the list (below) of all of the Summit’s U.S. church plants. Can you dream with me for a moment? Can you imagine how exciting it would be if God blessed us to see hundreds of churches on this list?
Our Church Plants:
Redeemer City Church, Baltimore, MD
Awaken Church, Columbia, SC**
Mercy Hill Church, Greensboro, NC
Soma Church, Indianapolis, IN
Imago Dei Church, Raleigh, NC***
City Church, Murfreesboro, TN
Summit Church, Denver, CO
Maranatha Grace Church, Fort Lee, NJ*
Grace Church, Boston, MA
Mosaic Church, Boston, MA
Vision Church, Raleigh, NC
Redemption Hill, Richmond, VA***
Integrity Church, Greenville, NC***
Gallery Church, Baltimore, MD*
Gallery Church, New York, NY***
Youngstown Metro Church, Youngstown, OH***
Coming Soon:
City Church, Raleigh, NC
Veritas Church, Fayetteville, NC
Hub Church, Boston, MA
* Second Generation Plant
** Re-plant
*** One of multiple supporting churches
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