Report of the Director of Church Extension
Dr. Donald Hohensee

One of the purposes of the Board of Church Extension is to advise the Conference Superintendent as to possible church planting locations which will result in new churches and to assist existing congregations as to growth possibilities.

The two churches launched last year have continued to move forward.  Mountain View Community Church had two services on Easter 2007 with over 450 in attendance.  Rev. Jon Strutz continues to lead this church.

José and Norma Meza continue to lead the Hispanic congregation called Amor y Vida in Salem.  José and Norma really need to hear from the Immigration and Naturalization Service with visas which will allow them to move the work forward in this church and in the Salem area.

The Church Health Profile, which we started to use last year, program had some computer problems which made it impossible to use.  The Conference looked into Natural Church Development and has adopted it.  Jack O’Neill and I returned to Chicago for additional training in the use and coaching of NCD materials.  We then sponsored a seminar at the Conference Center to train some of the Conference leaders in the use of NCD materials.  Eleven were able to attend the seminar, six of the participants are in churches that have begun the use of the NCD materials, the other five are giving serious consideration to their use.  I am sure during this Conference year we will sponsor another seminar to train additional people in the use of NCD and to get them hooked up with CoachNet, an online tool to help in the evaluation of the health of a local church.

The Board of Church Extension is reading The Ripple Church by Phil Stevenson.  We are adopting those concepts as our own as we think about church planting.  Rev. Stevenson looks primarily to the mother/daughter church model as the model for church planting.  Since we do not have a huge budget for church planting we believe that this is the model the Pacific Conference must use for church planting.

The Board is working on demographic studies of the Spokane area with the hope we can plant a church there in the next three years.  We need to find the right area and the right planter. 

Our top need is for men called of God to plant churches.  Jesus, in Matthew, asked us to pray the Lord of the harvest to thrust laborers into the harvest people.  As you talk to the Father about laborers, would you ask him to send us some church planters, the needs are still great?