Focused on Church Planting
Editor's Note: Sunday, Sept. 21, is National Church Planting Day in the Assemblies of God.
Since the start of 2025, the Assemblies of God has started 177 churches. Each congregation represents the Fellowship's commitment to bring the hope of Jesus to under-churched communities.
For the AG’s Church Multiplication Network (CMN), the heartbeat of National Church Planting Day is a call to action for pastors, church leaders, and lay persons to embrace the vision of multiplying healthy churches and advancing the Kingdom.
“This day builds momentum and starts conversations about church planting, both by celebrating stories of those who have church planted and encouraging future planters to explore the call to church planting and multiplication,” says Gerad Strong, director of leadership and training.
General Superintendent Doug Clay says, “Church planting is not about increasing our roster, but expanding His kingdom. As my friend Ed Stezer says, ‘We plant churches as if the Kingdom depends on it, because it does!’”
CMN exists to develop leaders and build the church. The organization trains, supports, and equips church planters as they step out in faith to launch healthy, sustainable congregations.
“The vision is to build vibrant, life-giving churches that are marked by spiritual and numerical growth” Mike McCrary, CMN’s director of operations and funding, says. “We want to see a movement of church planting churches. We want pastors to have a multiplication mindset. And we want to birth healthy churches that serve, disciple, and ultimately transform their communities.”
Church planter Bryan Brannon and his wife, Jamie, will be launching Together Church on October 12 and are grateful for the support they have received from CMN.
Having been in the ministry for many years, the Lord began to put a burden for church planting and church multiplication on Brannon’s heart in 2017. At the time, Brannon was serving as a youth pastor in Oregon but began to catch the AG’s vision for church planting as he learned of resources offered by CMN.
In 2022, Brannon attended the national CMN conference in Houston, an experience he says was “a big eye opener.”
“We weren’t looking to leave where we were, but we just kept coming back to CMN,” he recalls.
The couple returned to the national conference in 2023 and 2024, aware that God was “shaking things up” in their lives and sensing that change was on the horizon. Within the year, the couple moved to Boise, Idaho, to plant a church, a place where they had no connections. “We were just following the Lord’s leading and inspiration we had received from CMN,” says Brannon.
This is where Brannon says CMN made a huge difference in their journey towards a successful church launch.
“CMN helped answer all of our ‘now what’ questions, get a gameplan together for steps we needed to take, and paired us with great coaches who have been extremely helpful,” he says. “Their 18 steps to church planting are a great resource and we appreciate always having someone to call when we need something. Even if they can’t answer our questions right away, they always get us an answer.”
Brannon says that his favorite event each year is the CMN conference, calling it an annual point of encouragement.
McCrary says that the primary resources CMN offers are training, funding, and networking, three pillars that form the backbone of the AG’s church planting strategy.
“We want to equip pastors in every stage of their planting process,” he says, “and we are committed to providing every resource necessary to help them launch strong, sustainable churches.”
Additionally, the CMN team believes that no one should start a church alone. “We want to offer church planters a family of support that gives them encouragement and a sounding board as they walk along their church-planting journey,” McCrary continues.
Another resource offered to pastors are cohorts. These 9-month cohorts, according to CMN, are “designed to give church planters the opportunity to grow, learn, and connect with fellow church planters within their context.” Within each cohort, monthly coaching zoom meetings and resources are provided, along with the ability to form relationships with other church planters who are on a similar journey.
Because of the unique challenges and opportunities faced by both landscapes of church plants, there are currently two different cohort tracks for church planters to choose from – urban and rural.
To date, CMN has provided over $22 million in matching funds to help church plants get off the ground, trained more than 8,500 individuals in church planting strategies, and participated in over 5,000 new launches, according to their website.
