The following article first ran in the November edition of the Multipliers Monthly email. If you are interested, you can sign up for the mailing list.
This past year, two churches that have been part of the NAB Multiplier community for a long time both went through the process of becoming autonomous from their sending churches. We wanted to feature them together, as they’ve journeyed similar paths this year.
Introduce us to yourself/family, your congregation, and your location.
Drew: My wife Carissa and I live with our two toddlers in Medina, Ohio, a small suburb not too far from Cleveland. I pastor Disciples Church (yes, another NAB church did inspire this name).
Josh: I’m from Bismarck, North Dakota. My wife Kasey and I have three boys: Sam, Will, and Jack. Our family moved to Bismarck in 2019 to plant Missio Church.
How did your campuses/plants start? How were they originally sent out?
Drew: Our church was sent out five years ago as a campus by Heartland Community Church, which is located just twenty minutes away on the other side of Medina. Heartland chose a campus model to provide a massive amount of support for our staff and congregation but was open to the campus becoming autonomous one day. One of our major goals in multiplication was creating more opportunities for individuals to step into the work of ministry.
Josh: We were looking for a sending church to partner with, and Century Baptist was looking for a planter to start a new church that would reach the south side of Bismarck. Around the same time that Century was getting more serious about planting, God was preparing Kasey and I for a new ministry season. We got connected with the leaders of Century and began making plans for how to start a new expression of the church.
What prompted the decision to pursue autonomy, and what has that process been like?
Drew: COVID shook up our plans only five months after our campus opened its doors. This interruption plunged us into a patient process of discernment, leading to the adoption of our first leadership team, the creation of our vision and values, and planning unique sermon series and ministry calendars. In 2023, Heartland’s servant leader team affirmed that they saw God at work in us and encouraged us to pursue autonomy with their blessing and support. Key parts of our process have included the installation of an elder team; writing our constitution, bylaws, and statement of faith; and empowering gifted individuals to oversee ministries of the church.
Josh: Over the last four years, we have seen steady growth and many lives impacted through the ministry of Missio. God continues to do amazing things, and we regularly see lost people found and saved people sent. Our desire as a church is to celebrate these wins with our sending church and give all the glory to God. We now have a leadership team in place, a constitution, and bylaws, and we were just recently voted into the North Central Association. In other words, we are autonomous! It is a landmark, and we are grateful to have made it to this point in the journey.
What is something your sending church did that you would encourage future sending churches to emulate?
Drew: Our sending church has always trusted our instincts and convictions about how to best serve the people who make up our campus, giving us permission to innovate, dream, and even fail as we tried to serve as faithfully as possible. The freedom Heartland offered us in areas of vision and ministry – while providing support administratively and financially – was vital to us becoming an autonomous church.
Josh: Century Baptist has been a supporter of Missio financially, through prayer, and also with many words of encouragement. Because we are in the same city, Missio was able to operate under the elders of Century for the first couple of years, and our financials were also handled through their office. This allowed us as a church to focus more on outreach and take time to establish healthy leadership.
How can the NAB be praying for you in this season?
Drew: The NAB can be praying for our elder team as we learn how to shepherd a church and discern God’s will together. Our first year was dominated by completing tasks and making decisions essential to becoming an autonomous church. We sense that our work as a team must now shift to focus on questions related to discipleship and the movement of God’s spirit in our neighborhoods. Please pray that we would grow in our trust and love for each other, that we would be attentive to God’s voice, and that we would have the courage to step out in faith when God desires us to.
Josh: If you would like to pray for Missio Church, we are asking God to continue raising up leaders so we can make more disciples and establish the teams we need to keep growing as a church. We are also out of space for our Sunday gatherings, so prayers for wisdom in how to best move forward would be greatly appreciated! Thank you for your prayer support, and if you would like to visit about church planting or have questions about our story, I would be glad to share more.