Why an Axcess Church Plant?

Posted on June 4, 2014.

 

 
One of our 7 core values as a church is that we desire to be kingdom-multiplying.  One of the key words we use to describe the disciple-making mission of our church is ‘launch.’  Axcess was launched as a church campus plant to reach the un-churched/de-churched of Great Falls in a new and non-traditional way.  We want to see the gospel kingdom of Jesus Christ advance in our time and town.  We want to go into the kingdom of darkness, as a church in our city, and do as much damage as we can for the advancement of Jesus’ gospel kingdom seeing more and more people become white-hot worshipers of Jesus Christ (Mt. 16:18).  This is why Axcess exists.

Right before I came to Valley I took a class with a church planting group, Mission 16/18, on the book of Acts which was entitled “Keys to the Establishment & Expansion of the 1st Century Church.”  This study in the book of Acts rocked my world once again by seeing in fresh ways the mission of Christ to redeem the world through disciple-making, multiplying churches. Because of spending time in the book of Acts I came to Valley with a vision of church multiplication/church planting.  The Lord is honoring that biblical vision through what He is doing in revitalizing the church in Stockett and through what He is doing advancing the gospel through Axcess.

In the rest of this blog I want to quote from an article by Tim Keller entitled, "Advancing the Gospel into the 21st Century Part 1: Church Multiplying" where Keller argues from the book of Acts that church planting was the way the gospel advanced and the church grew empowered by the Holy Spirit in the 1st century and it is the way to advance the gospel kingdom in the 21st century as well.  Happy reading!

“In the book of Acts, because the household church was their basic building block, church planting was built into the churches very nature.  You only grew by multiplying new assemblies of Christians who meet for edification, evangelism, and praise.

There is a very common objection to reading the book of Acts that way.  It goes like this: ‘That was then!  Now, at least in North America and Europe, we have churches all over the place.  We don’t need to start new churches, we should strengthen and fill existing churches before we do that.’  Here are some answers:

New churches are by far the best way to reach 1) new generations, 2) new residents, 3) new people groups.  Studies show that newer churches attract new groups about 6-10 times better and faster than older churches do.  It is because when a church is new, younger and newer people can get into its leadership faster.  It is because when a church is new, it has no traditions and can experiment.  It is because when a church is new its main goal each week is not to satisfy the desires of long-time members (there are none!) but to reach new people.  As a result new churches are enormously better at reaching new people in a city.”