US Church Planting - Final 2023 Cohort

An update from Andy Farmer, Pastor at Covenant Fellowship, Glen Mills, Pennsylvania, USA…

We just finished our final retreat for the 2022-23 Church Planters Cohort and I’m thrilled to be up close and personal to what God is doing in stateside church planting in Sovereign Grace. The Church Planting Cohort is a structured equipping and advisory program run by the National Church Planting Group. For the past six years, I’ve had the privilege of walking with a small group of church planters each year who are drawn together through retreats and virtual conversations to turn church-planting hopes into church-planting realities.  

This year we had three planters complete the cohort program. The notable thing about this group is how diverse their plans and mission strategies are. Jeremy Hetrick will be launching Redeeming Grace Church in Mechanicsburg, PA. This is a bold initiative by Living Hope Church in Middletown, PA to send a number of its best people to start a new work across the Susquehanna River in central Pennsylvania. Redeeming Grace will be launching this fall. Gabe Magill is a Sovereign Grace elder from Philadelphia who has moved to the opposite end of the state and joined a new region to lay the groundwork for planting a church in Warren, PA. Perry Wang is doing a church planting internship at Risen Hope Church in Summerville, SC with the intent of starting a Mandarin-speaking Chinese church in the Charleston area.

You would think that such different kinds of plants would make it difficult to find common ground to work together in a cohort. But these brothers and their wives carry with them much deeper commonality than missional strategy. They carry above all the message of the Gospel, to be built into the fabric of a church and lived out in the locations where God sends them. And they carry our Sovereign Grace shared values and shaping virtues in the mission as well.

So what happened in the cohort? Each month we met together to talk about a key aspect of church planting - like building planting teams and leadership, planting with a clear mission and strategy, foundations for strong organization and administration, and enduring care for the planter’s soul and his family’s well-being. We involve other Sovereign Grace pastors and leaders who specialize in areas church planters need to learn and grow. The cohort includes three retreats where we spend concentrated time in discussion on key issues in planting. One of the retreats is a couple’s retreat, where the focus is on the care of marriage and family in and beyond the church planting experience.

Jeremy observes, “This cohort year has flown by, but not without an amazing deposit being given to us church planters. As I reflect upon the past year, I am amazed at how, at each step of the journey I was given the next step or next category of wisdom for the journey. From how to do interest meetings, to how to relate to your sending church, to how to build a team, to how to put together your prospectus and leadership team, and many other practical things, I really have felt the care and investment of Sovereign Grace Churches into my leadership and our church plant. Each cohort retreat Andy provided a time of refreshment and perspective on church planting, including historical tours (including a Great Awakening tour at our most recent retreat). On these tours he so aptly applied history lessons to give us broader perspective in our gospel endeavors. I so appreciated our time when we did our marriage retreat as well. Kate and I came away encouraged to continue to grow in gracious speech in our marriage and parenting so that our family is built up in the gospel of grace and is sustained through this difficult and labor-intensive work."

Perry also shared some of his experiences, “I was cared for and trained well in the cohort, through the seasoned pastors and fellow church planters, in the areas of leadership, marriage, church administration, website, interest meeting, planting core team, and so many practical things. For me, relatively new to Sovereign Grace churches, and an international, one of the most important things is that I experienced Sovereign Grace culture and the shaping virtues in this group. During the marriage retreat in Philly, my wife, Ruth, got sick. There was medicine that would help her but it was in the city in Chinatown. I could take an Uber to get it. But when Andy knew this, the whole team decided to go to Chinatown to get the Chinese herb. Then we cooked them at Andy's house. This made us feel like family."

Gabe may sum up the cohort experience best for all of us. “Thank you all for your courage in stepping out into new places with the Gospel! It is far easier pursuing this work knowing we are not alone in it.” 

If you are anticipating a church plant, as a planter, as a sending church, or as a region, please feel free to contact me at afarmer@covfel.org to talk about how the cohort program might serve your purposes.