Embarking on a transformative mission can redefine not only our own paths but the lives of countless others. That's precisely what Tony Webb of Vision USA Church Planting has done, transitioning from leading established congregations to pioneering a church-planting movement that's igniting an American Reformation. Our dialogue with Tony uncovers the seismic shifts he navigated and delves into the powerful Gatherer-Shepherd-Explorer (GSE) model—crucial tactics for church growth that defy traditional dependence on numbers and finances.
Tony's journey from pastoral challenges in Gettysburg to the establishment of thriving daughter churches paints an evocative picture of ministry adaptation and resilience. Our episode peels back the layers on the church's evolution from a dominant societal force to its current secular interface, examining how the GSE model, rooted in scripture, can be a beacon of hope and innovation. We also dissect leadership structures within the church, contrasting the conventional with organic, Jesus-modeled methods that cultivate community-driven growth, emphasizing the balance between order and the kind of constructive chaos that fosters multiplication.
Closing our compelling conversation, the vision for the 'Church-a-Day' in 2024 shines through, highlighting the unyielding power of unity and the relentless pursuit of spreading Jesus' teachings. This journey through Vision USA's transformative approach offers anecdotes of faith-driven individuals reaching out and reshaping communities. Listeners are invited to become part of this spirited movement, harnessing the potential within to impact the world around us with love, gathering, and the message of Christ.
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Embarking on a transformative mission can redefine not only our own paths but the lives of countless others. That's precisely what Tony Webb of Vision USA Church Planting has done, transitioning from leading established congregations to pioneering a church-planting movement that's igniting an American Reformation. Our dialogue with Tony uncovers the seismic shifts he navigated and delves into the powerful Gatherer-Shepherd-Explorer (GSE) model—crucial tactics for church growth that defy traditional dependence on numbers and finances.
Tony's journey from pastoral challenges in Gettysburg to the establishment of thriving daughter churches paints an evocative picture of ministry adaptation and resilience. Our episode peels back the layers on the church's evolution from a dominant societal force to its current secular interface, examining how the GSE model, rooted in scripture, can be a beacon of hope and innovation. We also dissect leadership structures within the church, contrasting the conventional with organic, Jesus-modeled methods that cultivate community-driven growth, emphasizing the balance between order and the kind of constructive chaos that fosters multiplication.
Closing our compelling conversation, the vision for the 'Church-a-Day' in 2024 shines through, highlighting the unyielding power of unity and the relentless pursuit of spreading Jesus' teachings. This journey through Vision USA's transformative approach offers anecdotes of faith-driven individuals reaching out and reshaping communities. Listeners are invited to become part of this spirited movement, harnessing the potential within to impact the world around us with love, gathering, and the message of Christ.
JOIN OUR NEW ONLINE LEARNING PLATFORM!
ENTER CODE - 75ULC2023 for 75% off!
Hello and welcome to the brand new American Reformation Podcast. We long to see the wider American Christian Church fall more in love with Jesus by learning from the practices of the early church and other eras of discipleship multiplication. We want to hear from you, make sure you comment and leave a review, wherever you're watching or listening, to tell us what God is doing in your life or how you feel about today's conversation. Lord, have your way in us. Let's dive in.
Speaker 2:Welcome to the American Reformation Podcast, tim Allman, here with a new friend in Christ that I was acquainted to, got introduced to about a year and a half ago Tony Webb, tony Leeds. Vision USA Church Planning, passion for Church Planning, church Revitalization using a tool called GSE. We're going to get into a gather shepherd elder model. God has given Vision USA Church Planning over 12,. This is awesome. Praise God here. Tony 1200 new church starts and existing congregations using GSE since 2007 with over 400. This is exponential growth right here, with over 400 churches started since 2019. A little thing called COVID happened in between that time as well, so praise be to God for this model. Tony has 24 years of pastoral experience with established churches and 13 years as a missionary using GSE, both in the US as well as internationally, and his vision is to pursue a church a day.
Speaker 2:I love that, based on Acts 16, verse five, in each of the hundred plus geographic regions that he's working in right now, tony serves as the CEO and founder of Vision USA. Thanks so much, tony, for hanging out with me today. This is going to be a lot of fun. Prime the pump for our chat today, though. How are you praying for Reformation? You got a wide view of not just the national but international church. But just hone in on the church in the USA. How are you praying for Reformation in the USA Church?
Speaker 3:Well, tim, it's a joy to be with you, looking forward to our time. The biggest prayer effort we put in is our vision for church a day, going for the one a day, and I just checked two weeks ago. God's given us activity in 29 of the 50 states in America, so we're going after the rest of them and in each place we want to see a church a day in each region, which we're working. So that's how we're praying, that's what we're working towards, it's how we're building Kingdom partnerships and having our missionaries go out and do the work that God's given us to do.
Speaker 2:I love it. So before we get into the GSE model, so much to talk about there, Love to just hear your ministry story. I mean, not everybody has that sort of a passion, that sort of a calling. How did that kind of develop in you? From you know, and I'm not throwing any kind of local pastor, not being disparaging at all, but from just a local pastor saying, whoa, I could have something larger, kind of an apostolic calling. That's a start churches to start churches. How did that develop, Tony?
Speaker 3:Well, going back to my wife's name is Kathy. When Kathy and I were married we were in seminary and you know, at that time we talked about starting churches because the nomination we were connecting with we had no relationships, we didn't know anybody and learn pretty quick that it really takes knowing somebody to really find pastoral work. You know, quote, unquote, or that's what we were running into. And so we had that desire from day one but got into pastoring established churches, actually went into church planning, initially out of seminary, and so God kept doing that. So he did the traditional approach the first two years out of seminary and it was a brutal, brutal two years. It was tough.
Speaker 3:We went to Gettysburg, Pennsylvania, third year of a third try, and I didn't know how bad of an idea that was, but God used it to really drive home the idea that, okay, we've got to start changing some stuff here in America. And then we went to a church then in a suburb of Columbus, Ohio, and we were there for almost 19 years and it's there that God really bloomed these ideas that are now GSC and really broke my heart over what the harvest looks like. You know, Ohio specifically, that's where it began and then spread out into the rest of the country and other places.
Speaker 2:Yeah, so go back to those first two years. What was so hard about being there in Gettysburg, a smaller church Tell that story just a little bit.
Speaker 3:Yeah, it was. Yeah, it's a very small church. It was. Just nothing was working. All the stuff I'd been taught, I thought, man, if you just preach it, they'll come. If I preached it, they didn't come, and just nothing worked. I was pounding my head against a wall and no movement was happening whatsoever, except I know now it's just what would God was doing in me, how he's forming my wife and I. That's what he was up to to show us. This just isn't the ticket. It's got to be something else, and that really laid the foundation for all the stuff we're doing now.
Speaker 2:Yeah, yeah. So then, being at the church there in suburban Columbus, tell the story. I mean, did you start to plant churches? That planted churches? Were they multi-site, were they you launching? You tell that story just a little bit.
Speaker 3:Sure, we went to basically a replant. The church had been established for 12, 13 years, the pastor had left, been three years without a pastor and then we found out after we came that if we didn't work out there we're going to close the church. And so we went and started to rent facilities and there, god blessed, we grew, bought land you know, did that kind of building stuff. But in the midst of that, in 1997, we daughtered our first church and we daughtered a total of five and I thought that would kind of keep my mind, my heart, for planting it, you know, in the pastoral world.
Speaker 3:But it got to the point where it just wasn't enough. It was a lot of hard work. We did the first three in a traditional way, so very resource demanding of people and money and time, and just realize there's just no few, we won't reach this country this way. It just it's just too demanding, it just takes too much and just isn't going to work, and that's really. Then we started doing the GSE stuff in 2007. That was we'd been there at the church since 91. So God used that time to take us into the GSE stuff.
Speaker 2:That's awesome. I'm a pastor in a multi-site congregation right now. What words of wisdom do you have for those of us that are kind of? I've talked to different guys that have thoughts around the viability and the multiplication possibility of multi-sites, and you know we launched one that required a lot of time, resources and people, and I don't think and it's going, it's going good, it's going good, but I don't think that's going to be the norm for us. That's why we're exploring GSE, the GSE process, and what is your?
Speaker 2:There's a there's a difference between multi-site and multi-congregational, and I think this is where we're going to be trending here in the coming years more of the network approach, and you know, congregations of various sizes can choose within a kind of a central group of staff and support services, but they can. It's still very autonomous. You can use the brand or not, whatever. Whatever helps, and that's we're trying to frame ourselves up right now, tony, as a family of ministries. So you're within the families, but you've got that individuality there's because we the last thing I would want to do is create something that is bureaucratic, that does not allow for rapid multiplication. That's what I'm fighting against, but I do have but I'll say this. I do have the systems and structure people in my world. This is like counseling right now, tony, I'm getting counseling from you?
Speaker 1:I don't know, it's free right.
Speaker 2:Okay, I do have the systems and structure guys in my world that say, hey, 20 campuses, 20 years, christ's grave field, let's go. And I'm like, well, we'll see, we'll see. I'm kind of really having an open hand, open heart to see where the Holy Spirit wants to, wants to do. You can hear the tension, so counsel me, Tony. What would you tell a pastor like myself in a rapidly growing community? Here's the reality. We need more churches in.
Speaker 3:East.
Speaker 2:Phoenix. So yeah what would you tell me in terms of approach?
Speaker 3:Well, I would encourage you to keep doing what you're doing, but I love your family idea. I love your comment about allowing any expression to take root, and regardless of size, and let it connect to resources, however it needs to, because the key to multiplication is simplicity and having that vision to continue to just press further into multiple generations of what happens, so that everything you start's pregnant, so it reproduces within the first year every time you start something, or even sooner. But to have that simplicity show, so that, basically, to walk away from the 1 to 3% of people who can plant a church that's a professional church plant and we need those. You know, those are good, we need those leaders, we need those churches. But if we're going to reach America, we need the church family planting and we need to be able to create systems that allow for the couple that lives on that street to start a church in their neighborhood.
Speaker 2:It's so exciting and these smaller representations are just invigorating to the leader. We have a church in Alpine Arizona, small little community, mostly summer folks there because it's really cold. But we got a member that spends about four months, four or five months there and he started Cowboy Church this last summer. Perfect, isn't that great, perfect. And he's like he's the, he's the gatherer, and then he's, he's having shepherds. He's trying to identify a local shepherd, but some shepherds from Christ Greenfield are going to support him, but it's Alpine Cowboy Church. It's fantastic, awesome, that's beautiful that is beautiful.
Speaker 2:That can help and tell the origin story of the gather shepherd elder. I like how you say process. It's not a model, it's a process, talk, talk. Just get nuts and bolts about GSE, if you would, tony Sure.
Speaker 3:Sure. So we call it a process, not a model, because we've, if it were a model, it produced the same thing in the field all the time. But we've seen a spectrum of churches started all the way from, you know, house church, microchurch, attraction, all Sunday morning, traditional Sunday morning. We've seen all those expressions happen. So that's why we lean towards process and we do know that GSE is a starting mechanism. So that's the power and the simplicity of it.
Speaker 3:And the basic idea is you find a gatherer who is a people magnet. It's an apostolic wired man, woman, kid, who just as attracts people. They can't help it, it's just how God made them. And you pair a gather with a shepherd and usually less than two weeks church can start and it's a beautiful thing. And the gathering process here's the information dump 20 Greek words in New Testament describe the idea of gathering to a mission or causing to come together, and 183 occurrences.
Speaker 3:So the point is it's a very common idea in New Testament, part of the culture, and we've learned that a gather is a birthright gift. It's part of being made in the image of God and so unsafe people are gatherers. Every drug dealer you know is an amazing gatherer and when Jesus comes in, it changes radically and beautifully. And so we have gatherers all over the place. They're not evangelists, they're not people of peace. Those are different gifts that God's given us in the harvest, and so having to recognize the gatherer and being yet one more tool we have for harvest work is just a beautiful, beautiful thing.
Speaker 2:Let's pause on the gatherer there. What are some of those Greek words? Let's geek out just a bit. Tony, Tell me a story or two where a gatherer pops off of the page of Scripture Sure.
Speaker 3:So Jesus and John, one, the last two stories. Jesus gathers, where he talks, you know, andrew and John are standing up, John the Baptist and Jesus walks by and John Baptist says there's the Lamb of God. Boom, those two guys go follow Jesus and they spend a day together and then Andrew goes and gathers his brother Peter brings him to Jesus. That's simple gathering. Next paragraph is with Philip. Jesus gathers Philip, he gets Nathaniel. Can any good come out of Nazareth? You know. So, boom, those happen there. Probably my favorite gathering story in the Gospels is Mark one. The leper who is gets healed, is told to tell no one but go make sacrifice. But he goes to town, tells everybody Jesus can't go to town anymore. That's one of our gathering words, probably of the 20, sunago is the most common, 60, some occurrences, or Sunago to gather together, and so that's the dominant word that's used of the whole of all the gathering. You know, geek out words that are a lot of fun to go through.
Speaker 2:I mean, you can look at. I love, I love looking at the Gospels through the lens of gathering the woman at the well right.
Speaker 3:Yeah, absolutely I mean she's?
Speaker 2:she's one of the first evangelists, right?
Speaker 1:Yeah, yeah.
Speaker 2:Right now the message to her town come and see this man who told me everything, everything he told me.
Speaker 1:Yeah, you gotta come see it.
Speaker 2:And then obviously the women, who who find the tomb empty are the first come and see, he's not. He's not here, and God and.
Speaker 2:John, they go running, they go running. So, yeah, it's absolutely everywhere. One of one of the struggles that that we're walking through right now, I think moving from a Christian America to a postmodern, you know, pre Christian, secular kind of culture is is wrapping our heads around the rapid multiplication in the book of Acts. And there's been, there's been a move as postmodern let's get a little, let's get 30,000 feet here, a little, tony. There there was a move around 1998, I believe, when the book and you'll know the author, I think Mission Church came out and it started this kind of in the early 2000s.
Speaker 2:I was reading a book recently on the history of the word Mission All and the Mission, mission Church. There was a lot of organizations, a lot of groups started talking about the Missio day as they saw secularism beginning, beginning to rise. But this is a far shift, I think for those who have been connected to the institution of the local church, those who have been connected to the way we train pastors and leaders, right, this is mega, mega shift and I it's kind of knee jerk for a lot of us to say how far things have gone and so how we need to look at the story, the message, the process of Jesus in the early church. No, I mean we just do it this way we preach and people gather.
Speaker 1:No, how will?
Speaker 2:they hear unless people are sent to proclaim proclaim the word right Any 30,000 feet kind of historical understanding of why we're at the stage of the church, especially here in America and the West, where we need a model, a process such as GSE.
Speaker 3:Yeah, the look through how we got here. In the early 1900s we tend to have adopted this more CO one main pastor end up being the pastor, does all the work, kind of hired, a chaplain concept. And what I tell people now when we partner and we go through coaching and training is that, regardless of the size of your church, your church, whether it's 10 people or 2000 people, was all created under the same system and that same system puts the pressure on you as a key leader, whether you're 10 people or 2000 people, and the system runs on numbers and money. And so we've got to recognize that because numbers mean people. That's important. Money is important because it's a key to discipleship as Jesus gets into our wallets and we're able to show how we love Jesus by what we do with our money and our time, our other resources. So they're important ideas, but we've got to create systems that move away from those as the driving forces behind the systemic creation of church into a more people based and going sending idea of what we're about is what I'd recommend.
Speaker 2:Well, absolutely, and this is where some are listening or Lutheran. This is where the Lutheran doctrine of vocation pops up. Wherever you're at, in your home, out in the community, in the marketplace, as a neighbor Like you, bring the light of Christ. You are gathering people by word and spirit to the light of Christ. So, yeah, praise God, brother. So talk about the partnership, though, between the gatherer and then the shepherd, and how this is such a like two sides of the same coin. This thing doesn't work unless you have the gatherer and the shepherd.
Speaker 3:Yes, I love your two year, one coin, two sides.
Speaker 3:It's a great picture of this because we all want church plants happen and we've seen, you know, for example, a couple go plant somewhere, they're gather people, they'll do great and they'll get people into a room and then all of a sudden you got a shepherds and guess what stops happening.
Speaker 3:Well, the gathering stops because we've just had one person doing this. So, having both and the key to it is the person we don't always talk about right away, which is the regional missionary or the pastoral oversight of what's going on there is someone watching this, someone's working with us to say this gatherer, this shepherd, needs to work together and that's in our vernacular, is the regional leader. And so you're a regional leader, you're building, you know your system is, the spirit leads you and you're able to say, hey, here's a gather, here's a shepherd, let's pull them together to make this happen. And so someone needs to work, that someone's got to massage, that someone's got to make sure these two work well together and get what's going on. And you have caught the vision. And you know, the gatherer brings people, the shepherd takes care of the people once they're there, and boom, it's a beautiful thing.
Speaker 2:Yeah, no, it really is so elder define elder really quick. Is that the regional leader, someone that's providing that kind of higher level oversight? How have you seen the elder role kind of evolve?
Speaker 3:Yeah, we want everything under elder oversight. So often the regional leader is the least like a book of acts, paul providing regional geographic oversight from an elder perspective of everything. That's starting, because what is it? X 14, paul went back to appoint elders, but there were, you know, there was elder oversight by his life and control. But we do want elders to come into and be raised up within each congregation, either raised up within or brought in, so that we have that, that elder oversight that brings trust into the relationship of everything and longevity. That's a couple of things that we ask elders to do as they come in and be a part of what's happening.
Speaker 2:I love it. I love it. So the inverted pyramid of the leadership structure. It appears to be the way of Jesus. But a lot of times in our church bodies, whether you're Catholic and Lutheran, we're in our denomination we're kind of wrestling with what sort of church are we? Are we a congregational church that has regional and national oversight and support? Or are we an Episcopal church with top down resolutions, national kind of restrictions?
Speaker 2:And right now we're leaning toward that and that's unfortunate because it hampers missional visioning right and we can get into what we're trying to do in our district to provide more freedom, more of a release, but the leadership, the older leadership style of Jesus, then followed by the Apostle Paul, was much more of a release equip, inspire, empower, react as stuff is happening in the community that's countered to the mission of Jesus. There's character issues that I need to speak into, but he's responding to what is already happening leaders already being raised up. His pastoral epistles, right, I mean 2 Timothy, 2, 2, find other men who can teach and then encourage them to do the same.
Speaker 2:I don't think we've looked at that. Enough of the bottom up approach and Jesus really, really hits this hard. I was reading through I think it's Matthew 23 into 24, jesus is hard words to the Pharisees and you know their phylacteries are long.
Speaker 2:they take the positions of honor and you know they have this kind of arrogance about them that is unbecoming to one who's a part of this new kingdom that I've come to inaugurate, and he's either then says let no one call you rabbi, for you have one rabbi, one, one father, who's your teacher, you know, let no one call you master and Lord. Like Jesus is lowering them big time, and when the Holy Spirit descended upon them, this thing just blew up in a good way and a Holy Spirit inspired way and, and it appears as if, like the structure they were, they were reacting to what the spirit was doing to provide the appropriate structure, rather than saying we've got to have all the structure kind of nailed, nailed down before we get after it. This is a very, very different model than than we have in many of our highly structured denominations. Any thoughts there, tony?
Speaker 3:Yeah, you're right, this is a whole different approach. This is pretty messy, this is pretty chaotic. It's it's very much. I don't really necessarily know what's going on until after it's happened. I don't know what's going on into it. And the whole issue of chaos and being comfortable with that type of messiness is a key part of understanding what multiplication looks like, because there's no multiplication anywhere that's nice and pretty and cut and and within the the you know black lines of the box, there's no multiplication that lies there.
Speaker 2:Let me play devil's advocate a little bit. What would you say to someone who says but isn't, isn't God a God of order and structure? So is this unwise? Are you being kind of flippant with the message of Christ? What would you say to that person, tony?
Speaker 3:I would say God definitely is a God of order. He's also a God of of create, of chaos and multiplication, and the process you'll see in the book of Acts and Elsewhere is you'll see this massive explosion, chaos. Then you'll see order come, and that's God's process. And so we have a lot of order in the church in America. We don't have any of the chaotic mess, we don't have any of the multiplication, and so we're well ready for when it happens. We just aren't doing anything to make it happen. The multiplication, the chaotic expression.
Speaker 2:Well, you lose.
Speaker 3:You lose control and leaders generally exactly Exactly One, a sense of control, the C word. The C word.
Speaker 2:Yeah, yeah, exactly, but I, I think it's so invigorating to say I don't know. It's free to say I don't know exactly what the Lord is up to we're like. I don't even I don't have the capacity to know all the stories of the Lord's work, but when I hear about the stories of multiplication happening and people dreaming new dreams to reach people with the gospel, I want to be one as a in this role as an elder. I want to tell that story, I want to tell the story of the Alpine church, et cetera.
Speaker 2:Right, I mean, that's that's it. But apart from apart from story, I don't. It's like shrugging my shoulders. Okay, yeah, the Lord you're, you're up to beautiful things and I get to be a very, very, very small part of it. Amen, I heard I'd love to get your take on this, because I think we should pray for more humility in the church, especially among among leaders. Amen From the great theologian Mike Tyson.
Speaker 2:This is the new quote from from Mike Tyson here recently that I've dropped a few times is is when I think I'm a big deal. I'm very easily offended.
Speaker 2:I'm very easily offended Wow I don't know if Mike is a Christian, but he goes when I realize I'm nothing, I'm not a big deal, nothing offends me, nothing offends me. So the humility of Christ leads us to this kind of open-handed. I'm not offended. You can try new things, you can. You know, and I'm praying for that, for that structure. But I a lot of times, a lot of times new things, new wine and new wineskin and I think a lot of times are, are denominations with, you know, centuries, old systems and structure. A new thing institutionally, can live along side an older thing, as long as they don't eat one another, kill one another. You know two things can take place at the same time. You can have in in declining denominations, you can have church planning movements that say I respect what's, what's taken place and the structures, the institutions that have been created, and at the same time we're, simply for the sake of our respective region, especially in reaching cross-culturally, I I think we need new wine to go and new, new wineskin.
Speaker 2:Any any words about kind of the live and let live approach to many of denominations who are in decline right now. Tony.
Speaker 3:Yeah, I know practically in our kingdom partnership work, where one of our highest values of his USA is to build kingdom partnerships, which is partner with other denoms and networks, and and bring GSC into their church planning world.
Speaker 3:Going into COVID, coming out of COVID, gse has made more sense to denominational leaders and it's ever have, and I've been doing this for about 20 years this GSE stuff. So it's very exciting to see that many denominational leader, leaders and leadership Not only in church planning, but you know, the main executives sitting, you know, at their desk, are Seeing that the, the need for simplicity and the movement of the gospel Into places where the gospel does not exist is what we have to do. And I'm meeting some leaders who are, I mean, they're taking a risk, they're, they're positioning themselves and their denominational you know resources of people and whatnot, to Take that risk of how do we go where we're not and how do we get the gospel where we're not. And it's very exciting. It's just very I wasn't sure I'd see this day, but God's starting to build this day. It's, it's a wonderful day.
Speaker 2:It is a wonderful day, so tell your story of interacting with the Pacific Southwest district of the Lutheran Church, missouri Senate and and Dom Rivkin, our mission exec, as well as our, our president, our regional district president there, mike Gibson. What's that experience been like, working with our our district?
Speaker 3:Oh it's, it's. It's been remarkably wonderful. I've known Dom for probably 10 years, 10 or 11. We, we I think it's 11 now and so we've. We would check in a couple times a year with each other and just see what's going on, and and I've always loved what Dom's done. He's loved GSC.
Speaker 3:And then with everything that happened and meeting president Gibson, I remember the first zoom call. You know we just sat there for an hour and just just talked, you know, just got to know each other, didn't even do any talk, strategy or anything, just just an hour of hey, what do I need to know about you? Here's what you need to know about me. And it was just a beautiful, beautiful thing. I mean just so, just a fabulous, fabulous onboarding. I love working together. President Gibson made the comment to me. He said Tony made this really easy for us. We are people of the book and and GSC is from the book, it's from the Bible, so we don't have any issues there. And so I've walked into meeting many of you and you know, yep, spot on, y'all are people of the book. It's just. I love it.
Speaker 2:Hmm, are you seeing, because your back your background, what Baptist were you in a Baptist tradition growing up? Tony, I don't, you don't even know. Do not initially.
Speaker 3:I've come out of an anti-baptist background. I've out of a brethren world.
Speaker 2:Sure, sure so. Are you seeing more openness to those? Because we're a very liturgical, you know we could talk to sacraments and probably disagree a little bit there and that we don't Need to go there. But are you seeing more just kind of missional partnerships growing Interacumenically between different, different church bodies? Right now? Encourages, I hope.
Speaker 3:I'm. I'm seeing an openness to it. One of the things that we hope to do envision you say, this year is to bring together the various Leaders of the Kingdom partners. We have just to get on a call like this, just to meet each other, just to see how diverse we really are in how we do this thing called church, but how united we are on this thing called the harvest and the gospel and the different ways God's gifted us to take the gospel into places in America. So that's one of our. Our high values this year is to at least get one of those on the book and have the, you know, six or eight Kingdom partners. We have just be able to look each other on a camera and say, wow, this is fun, I want to know you better, yeah.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I love it. I love it. I'm praying for more of that unity. As a winsome witness in this dark and dying world, I'm praying for the. Christian Apostolic Church. I'm a shining light, united centered in the person, in work of Jesus. Praise God. So what? Are your favorite? Just a couple stories coming down the homestretch here. What are your favorite stories of? Of the GSE model? Just boom and and I'm not even talking numbers necessarily, but just bringing light the light of the gospel in a very maybe non-traditional Manor, tony.
Speaker 3:Sure, the, so the whole church a day vision. One of the first applications I'm praying for each year and God's not giving it to us yet, so I'm praying it for this year is that God would give us a church a day in our network, which means 365 new churches in this calendar year 2024. We've had, like last year, was 130. I think the most we've had has been like 150, and so we like this trajectory. But we're praying to see that and, and Lord willing, this is the year, and so some of the stories that excite me.
Speaker 3:Missyologist tell me that multiplication lies in the fourth to sixth generation of a church plant, so a church and then at daughters. When you get to five or six, because each the others are doddering as well. That's where we can start seeing true multiplication. And I know of places where we've got fourth generation, you know, daughter churches. But over Christmas a friend of mine, john Baker we call him Baker, we have a lot of Johns on some of our key teams so Baker texted me over the Christmas holidays and said, hey, we've got a fifth generation. So we've got our first fifth generation daughter.
Speaker 3:And it happens to be in Mexico because Baker works north Mexico for us, but I'm thrilled it. In the network We've got our first fifth generation Example of GSE process churches happening. We've got many stories of gathers gathering 200 people. I mean it's just mind-blowing. I think there are five of those stories that I'm aware of in our network of just one gather Bringing 200 people to something.
Speaker 2:What are they gammon? Get specific. What are they gathering toward? Like, how does someone even do that? That sounds wild in our culture today. What does that look like?
Speaker 3:Yeah, it's so. Two of the stories are in Florida. Jason's a pastor in Melbourne, which is the East Coast, and Jason said that they were gonna do a bonfire on the beach, you know. So they got a permit, dug a hole, you know, to build this little bonfire. 20 people from the church came because it was meant to be an outreach event and this one lady she brought 200 people from her neighborhood with her Come on, blew everybody's mind. Then they turned around. This was in the spring.
Speaker 3:In that same year they did something a Christmas party at her house. Again, 200 people showed up and the same 20 people were stuck in the corner of the house. And it's just. These people are amazing, but whether you gather one person and you gather 200 people, it's awesome, it's for the gospel. It's happened twice in Cuba that I know of, up in the mountains in the in the east. And then there's another example of someone bringing about 200 people and that's they're alive and well. The point of that story is they're alive and well, they're all around us. We just have to see them and, you know, empower them, vision eyes them, and bring them on board and let them gather like that for Jesus.
Speaker 2:So just to get a little bit more. Folks are probably curious did. Was there someone that stands up and gives a gospel proclamation at the bonfire at the Christmas gathering? Or is it all just kind of natural relationship building in the hopes of maybe Gathering for the elder or the shepherd I should say the shepherd to do their teaching, preaching things sometime in the future? What does that kind of look like as more of a because for us, being a sacramental church like that, that's one thing to have a party, it's another thing to gather around word and sacrament, right.
Speaker 1:So yeah, yeah rich.
Speaker 2:Look what's that bridge look like.
Speaker 3:Yeah, these all had purpose of intent of opening the Word in their presence, and so that was part of it. It was, of course, short, because it's hard to project your voice around that many people. But what in Jason's example? Many of those people are now part of the various churches that have started in. That's called Century Grace and the Century Grace Network.
Speaker 3:And so one of the beautiful multiplicative ideas that we've seen is this gathering culture formed, which, when someone is gathered into a congregation and they meet someone else who's been gathered in the congregation, they quickly find out oh, that's what this congregation does, they gather. So I guess I better go gather. And it's this beautiful, you know, because Jason can have eight to 12 generation of gatherers you know someone who's gathered, gathered, gathered, gathered by different people, and it's all they know. And so this culture gets formed and it's powerful. And that too is another multiplicative idea of how do we get there. So when new people come in, they meet other people who, as they tell their stories, realize hey, they were gathered, just like me. So I guess I'll go do the same thing.
Speaker 2:That's what happens here, it seems so ridiculously simple Like just find somebody that has the desire. I went to a Christmas party and I got. I just popped, right now was hanging out with a serial gatherer, a member at our church. She invited me. She says I've invited you last three years, pastor White, why didn't you come? I was like I got teenage kids, I couldn't do it. But this year I was like she's persistent, you know. And so I was like I'm gonna swing over. And here I was expecting maybe, like you know, some family members and maybe a handful of close friends and neighbors no, every person in her neighborhood.
Speaker 3:I'm not even joking on her cul-de-sac and then across.
Speaker 2:She lives on a little lake across. They all had come and she's lived there for two years. She's lived there for two years and they all know one another and are hanging out at Christmas Like this is unbelievable. I got around back with her, Tony, and say let's bring next Christmas, Let me share, like just that or somebody it doesn't have to be me just a little bit of the Christmas story. They could be at all different places, but yeah, it's so cool.
Speaker 3:They're all around us, tony, isn't it Exactly? Yeah, exactly, they're right there and they gather for their work. I mean, the business world's got this gathering for you. They pay, pete, they pay gather as well. They gather for their hobbies, they gather all over. There's that gathering for Jesus, and that's what we've really got to fix. We've got to blow the lid off that.
Speaker 2:Yeah, yeah, gather for Jesus Amen.
Speaker 1:Amen.
Speaker 2:This has been so inspiring, so encouraging. Thank you for blessing the Lutheran Church of Missouri Synod, our district. We're better because of it and you've got a congregation here in the East Valley of Phoenix that's going to blow the lid off. The Holy Spirit is in the process of blowing the lid off on the GSE process brother, thank you Thank you for blessing us. If people want to connect to VisionUSA and get connected with you specifically, how can they do so?
Speaker 3:Yeah, our website is visionUSAorg. My email is tweb twebb at visionUSAorg. I'd be glad to talk with anyone further, of course, because we just want to keep seeing people hear about Jesus.
Speaker 2:Amen Church of day. Baby Church of day in 2024.
Speaker 3:Amen brother.
Speaker 2:What a vision that is. This is the American Reformation Podcast. Sharing is caring, like, subscribe, comment wherever it is. You take this in and we promise to have conversations with leaders like Tony, humble leaders like Tony, going on a mission. In this secular, post-christian society, there are pre-Christians who are on their way to Jesus. Do we have the eyes to see them? They are all around and those gatherers are all around as well. It's a good day. Go and make it a great day. Thank you so much, tony. You're awesome. Thank you, brother.