Southern Baptists are at our best when we send – when local churches lock arms to plant evangelistic, Bible-anchored congregations and make disciples where Christ is not yet known. That conviction shapes everything we do in church planting. In a previous article I was able to focus on where we, as Southern Baptists and the North American Mission Board (NAMB), have been over the last 15 years.
Now, I want to address where we are headed as a family of churches. NAMB doesn’t plant churches; churches plant churches. Our role is to assist churches – exactly what messengers have tasked us to do – by helping them assess, train, coach and care for planters and teams, with a priority for population centers and underserved areas.
What the next decade requires
We are praying toward a bold, simple vision: see God’s kingdom expand by 1 percent in North America over the next decade – roughly 2.75 million people reached – through multiplying disciples and churches.
To reach that horizon, we must significantly grow the number of partnering churches in the Send Network family from roughly 4,500 today to 9,000 in the coming years. Doubling the number of partners means doubling the reach of residencies, pipelines and sending teams in order to multiply Gospel presence where it is thin.
This is not top-down control. It’s local church-up ownership. When a sending church raises up leaders, trains them in its own ministry culture and commissions them with a team, a new work launches with relational trust and shared DNA. Because every community is different, churches are equipped to contextualize wisely, so they preach the same Gospel while planting congregations that make disciples in urban cores, suburban neighborhoods, small towns and rural communities.
The on-ramps: simple, doable, replicable
Send Network has built practical pathways to help churches step in: the Sending Lab is a one-day, collaborative workshop designed to help pastors and teams develop a church-specific sending vision and identify concrete next steps for finding, developing and sending church planters (Read more here and here). Residency Builder helps churches stand up a pipeline they can actually walk through—moving leaders from discovery to development to deployment (see Residencies for Churches).
Across every region of North America, our field teams keep the main thing the main thing with several outcomes in view, including: local ownership, farm systems, new churches and church mobilization. Healthy pace and depth go together; we’re calling for Sending Churches that plant every three years and Multiplying Churches that plant every year – supported by well-assessed, well-trained planters, sustainable pipelines and a cooperative family committed to prayer and generosity.
Why we’re hopeful
No one denies the cultural headwinds. Yet we see spiritual momentum: multi-year increases in baptisms across Southern Baptist life (Lifeway ACP analysis) and sustained generosity toward mission (see Baptist Press). Those aren’t just numbers; they represent people meeting Jesus and congregations stepping forward to plant and multiply.
Cooperation through the Cooperative Program and the Annie Armstrong Easter Offering fuels the strategy – providing assessment, coaching, care and start-up grants – that turns a church’s conviction into a church plant in a real neighborhood.
Your church’s next faithful step
For pastors and churches, the first move is clarity and ownership. Bring a team to a Sending Lab to clarify your sending vision and three-year roadmap, then name a point leader and a small sending team to own the plan. Choose a rhythm, every three years or every year, and put the next commissioning date on the calendar so you can work backward with purpose.
Build a right-sized residency using Residency Builder, align the budget to fund assessment, residency and launch support, and adopt a target place and planter profile that fits your church’s calling. Finally, commit to a care plan for your planter family – regular coaching, relational touchpoints and practical re-supply – so the work remains healthy beyond the launch.
For members and teams, the invitation is to leverage your life for the mission where you already live, work, learn and play. You don’t need to hold a microphone or change jobs to be part of multiplication; God delights to use your job, skills, and passions for His glory and the expansion of His kingdom. We’ve created a free study – Leverage Your Life – to help every believer see how God can use their everyday life in disciple-making and church planting.
In 3 John 5-8, we’re reminded that those who “send them on their journey in a manner worthy of God” become fellow workers for the truth. In other words, every believer can participate: some will be sent, others will send, and both are essential.
Hard soil does not intimidate the Lord of the harvest. The story of Southern Baptists is not merely institutional – it is missional. It’s the story of ordinary churches and ordinary Christians, in ordinary places, watching God do extraordinary things as we keep sending.
So, let’s seek first the kingdom, stick together as a family, and think multiplication until every neighborhood in North America has a Bible-preaching, disciple-making, church-planting witness for the Gospel of Jesus Christ.
Published December 10, 2025