By Stu Streeter
VP of Church Multiplication and Ministry Advancement
Multiplier Summit began back in 2021 with a vision for a multi-day gathering where church planters and their spouses could come together in a beautiful place for soul care — an opportunity to slow down, hear teaching on spiritual formation, and genuinely commune with others who carry the same call to church planting in their respective cities.
That first year, we gave sweatshirts to our small group of attendees that read, “Because who we are becoming matters.” In many ways, it became a battle cry for our community: Among us, it will be different. We will not succumb to the temptation of becoming church planters drunk with ambition, building things in our own names while merely asking God to “bless our efforts.”
Over the years, much has changed. Our community in the NAB has grown to include both church planters and church revitalization pastors, and we now call it the Multiplier Community. Our gathering, once held in beautiful Chicago, moved this year to the greater Cleveland area so we could experience the future host site of next year’s Triennial. Even the format of the week has expanded. What began as a gathering of thirty-five people has now grown into an entire week of NAB gatherings and collaboration. Each evening, all the groups come together for Bonfire — an annual gathering of leaders from across the NAB committed to the missional and formational movement we have pursued together for the better part of fifteen years as a conference of churches.
This year’s Multiplier Summit kicked off Tuesday night with an informal gathering at the Medina Mansion, where I posed a question rooted in a request from the disciples in John 14:8: “In this season of life, what would be enough?”
As I spend time with multipliers across Canada and the United States, I find a common thread in our work – we always seem to need just a little more. A little more money. More people. More time. More, more, more.
And this struggle is not unique to multipliers in 2026. Even the disciples — after years spent with Jesus, witnessing miracles, hearing him teach about the Kingdom, and watching him raise the dead — still came to the Last Supper wanting more from him. This unquenchable thirst for more slowly chips away at our souls and deforms our relationship with God and with our churches.
My challenge to our community was to reorient our thinking around the reality that God is enough, his provision is enough, and our faithful efforts are enough. Jesus himself, after his baptism — before he had tangibly changed the world in any measurable way — came up out of the water and heard the Father say, “This is my Son, whom I love; with him I am well pleased.”
Through all the changes of the last several years, one thing remains just as true today as it was at our first gathering in Chicago in 2021: The souls of NAB pastors matter. Who we are becoming matters. And so our focus, once again, was to set aside time to care for the souls of planters and revitalization pastors.
Our gatherings have grown over the years, and I am deeply encouraged to see the role of multipliers growing within the NAB family as well. The year ahead for the Multiplier Community is a crucial one, and for those partnering together to continue building the foundations of a church multiplication movement in the NAB that can endure for generations, there is a growing sense of eagerness and purpose unlike anything I have experienced in a very long time.
God is up to something beautiful among us, and to witness his work shaping all our lives is a tremendous gift.
Thank you for joining the ride over these last six years of gatherings. But most of all, thank you for answering the call God has placed on your life to partner in his multiplying work and carry the Gospel near and far.
I leave you with the prayer of the Apostle Paul over our whole community:
I pray that from his glorious, unlimited resources he will empower you with inner strength through his Spirit. Then Christ will make his home in your hearts as you trust in him. Your roots will grow down into God’s love and keep you strong. (Ephesians 3:16–17 NLT)