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This collaborative effort is looking to partner with like-minded, progressive churches that share a vision for the following:
- Reaching post-Christian, postmodern generations through high-impact church planting
- Impacting the spiritual foundation of future generations through healing, local church communities
- Laying down fiefdom mentalities for greater cross-denominational, Kingdom-building unity
- A willingness to work with other churches to gain synergy toward a common church planting strategy
Churches best suited to be training churches where church planters are equipped will exhibit the following values lived out effectively in growing degrees:
1. Evangelism:
- Integrates evangelism into the services and the relational life of the church
- Creates a church culture that welcomes doubters and cynics and acknowledges unchurched perspectives in order to lead people toward faith
- Sees evangelism as a process that requires inclusion and openness and time, relying on God’s Spirit to generate faith and cause the growth in seeking people
2. Community:
- Creates safe smaller communities where questions and struggles can get sorted out and the truth can be spoken in love among trusted friends
- Stresses the importance of individuals living out the "one-another" commands of scripture relationally
- Provides opportunities for non-believers to connect in community as an aspect of evangelism, understanding this generation doesn't ask "What is true?", they ask "Do I want to be like these people?"
- Organizes to connect all willing people into community
3. Relevant Biblical Teaching:
- Helps unchurched individuals understand life in God¹s Kingdom and motivates believers into deeper trust of God to “see His Kingdom come” in their own lives
- Challenges the negative cultural assumptions of what Christians and Christianity are like
- Connects Biblical truths to real-life questions
4. Expression of Spiritual Gifts:
- Mobilizes individuals to discover their passions and gifts and function as Christ’s Body, "re-presenting" Christ through all His parts working in unity under the direction of His Spirit
- Extends the body in full expression of all gifts to serve the needs of the world
5. Progressive Leadership & Innovative Organization:
- Establishes strategies that involve every believer and reflect evangelism as a top priority in both their church mission and budget
- Structures the church in such a way that spiritual formation can happen and is expected
- Organizes to meet people at their point of need to help them truly heal and grow
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Utilizing ELI's partnership program makes it possible for congregations to continually participate in the expansion of high-impact churches aimed at America's un-churched generations.
Check out the Benefits of a Partner Church.
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"To reach beyond significant cultural barriers we are going to have to adopt a missionary stance in relation to the culture."
(Alan Hirsch, The Forgotten Ways)
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