What are your initiatives? How do you plan to see the fruition of this vision?
I believe what we focus on and our strategy make us somewhat unique. Mission OC is focused on three buckets. Bucket #1 is to equip churches to become church multiplication centers. We are doing this by building an ecosystem to support the strategies and initiatives of churches in multiplying disciples and churches. We quickly realized churches struggle to plant churches because they don’t have effective tools and processes in place to help them be successful. Mission OC has introduced several tools to churches in Orange County to serve them in this adventure.
Bucket #2 is to support the church planter. We want to connect church planters in a geography that is big enough to be significant (Orange County), but small enough to be relational. We serve church planters well when it comes to mission and relationship. What we’ve struggled with is introducing churches and church planters to an “operating system” that is effective at assessing, equipping and coaching church planters.
Instead of reinventing the wheel, we decided to partner with Launch to open a Launch hub in Orange County. This hub will serve churches and church planters by providing best practices that most churches don’t have access to, as well as inspire and equip next-generation church planters to lead strong. In my opinion, Launch offers the best tools available to be successful at church planting, and everything they produce is designed to serve the local church in a specific city or geography.
Finally, bucket #3 is to see churches take greater responsibility for their city by mobilizing disciples, multiplying churches and engaging the domains of the city. We also want to serve as a “neutral platform” or “playground” to make it easier and more effective for churches in the same city or area to collaborate around these very principles. In doing this, we believe the church will expand and cities will transform.
The question we like to ask is, “What if we asked, ‘How’s my city doing?’ instead of, ‘How’s my church doing?’” This question can have huge implications on churches and cities. That’s why our vision is to collaborate to accelerate the transformation of Orange County.
For example, we have 14 churches in Santa Ana working with each other right now. At our first gathering in May, these leaders identified 26 places in the city with no spiritual presence and committed to either focus on planting a church in these places or that a church would take spiritual ownership and plant the Gospel. When you talk about the “lostness” in your city’s geography, the conversation naturally leads to church planting.