Ernest Smith

I remember attending three church planting conferences the year prior to launching Front Range. At two of the three conferences, we heard story after story about how difficult church planting is, how much you will have to sacrifice and how you probably won’t see any substantial growth for years to come, if you were even able to make it past the 80% of church plants that fail in the first 5 years.

I left both of those conferences praying one prayer, “God, use us to write a different story. May our story be filled with growth, with life-change and with you doing what only you can get credit for.”

Two years later, we have seen God do great things. It has been very difficult, we, and so many others, have had to sacrifice a ton personally and as a family, but we have been very blessed and humbled by what God has chosen to do within our community. We have seen God use our story to bring others hope that there can be a different way. Knowing God is using us excites me; however, knowing that there is a greater story being written, is even more exciting.

One of the things that brings me the most hope for the future of the Church and the efforts of church planting is seeing the next generation of guys and how they are making even greater strides than those who went before them.

I look at guys like Robby Emery at One Oak Church in Detroit, MI and Shawn Withy-Allan at Manna Church in Honolulu, HI and I see guys who are leading their teams up to launch day better than most church plants I have seen. I look at guys like Zach Lambart with Restore Austin in Austin, TX and John Mark Redwine at The Gathering in Asheville, NC who are seeing God do incredible things in some of the most difficult places for churches to exist.

Watching these guys and seeing what God is doing in their midst gives me hope for church planting and the global Church. God is writing a new story in our country and in our world. God is doing things that we have never seen with new churches and the best is still yet to come.

God, thank you for the church planters who went before us, so we have some shoulders to stand on. Thank you for healthy church planting organizations like ARC, Strategic Launch Network and CPR who have trained, resourced and equipped church planters all over the world. Thank you for using our story as a small glimpse of hope to future church planters. Thank you God for the story you are unfolding now is so much greater than anything we could have asked or imagined.