November 2009

In November of 2009, Jacqueline and I went to a church planter’s roundtable that was being held at National Community Church in Washington, D.C.  It was there that we really became acquainted with ARC. ARC stands for Association of Related Churches, a church-planting organization based out of Birmingham, Alabama. I say “really became acquainted,” because we had actually visited the original ARC church plant, Church of the Highlands, in Birmingham once on trip to Jacqueline’s home in Alabama. Several of her friends that she grew up with in school and church had gotten involved with the new church and kept telling her that we had to come for a visit. We finally got a chance to slip over for a service and we were blown away. They were still holding services in Mountain Brook High School’s fine arts auditorium. It was the first time I had ever experienced a church service in a portable format, that didn’t feel portable. I was very inspired, but it would still be a few years before I truly understood why.

At the roundtable, we were introduced to ARC’s model of church planting, which included ideas like launching large[1], guerrilla marketing[2] and budgeting on 90% of the previous year’s budget. Jacqueline and I were very impressed with the results that the leadership was presenting us with. To date, ARC has planted a little over 300 churches and they have a 97% success rate. A couple of things that stood out to us were the strategies that ARC employed to ensure churches were healthy and the stages of training and assessment that they required prospective church planters to complete to be a part of their organization.

We were honored to meet then ARC President and Founder, Billy Hornsby. He was truly inspirational and encouraged our hearts for those two days. He talked about things like forming a launch team of 35 or more people, raising multiple thousands of dollars for planting (ARC requires planters to raise at least $30,000.00, to match the funds they are willing to put toward the plant in the form of a no-interest loan) and finding a sponsor church to co-sign for the loan they offer. I remember thinking I would never be able to do those things. As much as Jacqueline and I were inspired, we actually left the roundtable feeling discouraged. I simply felt that I could never fit the mold of an ARC planter.  Thankfully, neither God nor my wife agreed with me and both went to work encouraging and challenging me to dig a little deeper, to look for the truth of God’s calling over my life.  During the next year, I would grow in confidence that I was indeed called to plant a church and I would come full circle to once again believe that God was going to use me to do something great!

Brian