"Crowns of Beauty:
Planting Urban Churches"
Conference Report

February 4-6, 1999 in Los Angeles by World Impact at Church on the Way
A Conference Report by Dan Grether, Free Indeed Ministries International (dgrether@missionspokane.org) Click here for information on the upcoming Crowns of Beauty Conference, February 15-17, 2000.

The Crowns of Beauty: Planting Urban Churches conference earlier this month had a profound impact on me. It was an outstanding conference by two outstanding organizations: World Impact, an urban discipleship ministry serving in a number of key U.S. cities, and Church on the Way, a remarkable urban church. Twelve hundred attended from around the United States and beyond.

The key concept I bring back from Crowns of Beauty is that there are 40 million urban poor in the United States (for many of whom English is a second language), 90% of whom are outside of the Church of Jesus Christ. It hits me that we have a "10-40 Window" here in our own country of poor, "hard-core," unreached peoples that our Lord Jesus Christ wants reached.

All of our existing (predominantly suburban, white, middle-class, English-speaking) churches could continue to do effective evangelism without ever reaching these 40 million urban poor. It will require cross-cultural, missionary church planting to reach our "10-40 Window" in this fourth largest mission field in the world.

The last day of the seminar, Keith Phillips announced that World Impact had been praying for a year that commitments would be made during Crowns of Beauty to plant 1,000 new churches among the urban poor in the United States---this year! Then he asked how many each of us would take responsibility for. Having never before seriously considered planting even one church among the urban poor, the Lord Jesus led me to make a commitment to see five planted in Spokane in 1999.

This was a scary, overwhelming commitment until the Spirit caused me to be aware that I was making a commitment that the whole Church in Spokane would be called upon to fulfill together. If you feel called by the Lord to be involved on a church planting team this year, please give me a call at 509-468-4855.

The entire, wonderful three days of teaching were summed up for me by a workshop called "Churches Reproducing Churches." Carol Davis told how she had been involved with her family planting churches since she was six years old. She assumed that all churches reproduced other churches until she found out otherwise years later.

"Every healthy organism reproduces itself," she reminded us. "If a church doesn't reproduce, it must be either sick, dead or sterile..." Carol then led us through a remarkable inductive study of Luke 10, Jesus sending out the seventy-two. During those few minutes, Jesus' words spoken 2,000 years ago became clear, concise directives for our church planting in Spokane in 1999. The "person of peace" especially jumped out as a key to unlocking our cities for Christ.

This one-hour seminar was, hands down, the clearest presentation I have ever heard on planting churches. The edited content is available in "How to Start a Church-Starting Church" and the seminar tape is available from World Impact.

Finally, the entire "Crowns of Beauty: Planting Urban Churches" conference was so valuable that I would encourage you to obtain any or all of the keynote presentations listed below. They are available at www.worldimpact.org/events/crownorder.html. May your vision be focused and expanded as mine was to plant churches among the urban poor of Spokane.

Yours and Christ's for Spokane,

Dan Grether (dgrether@missionspokane.org)
Free Indeed Ministries Int'l P.S.

Don't miss the next the next Crowns of Beauty Conference, February 15-17, 2000. (http://www.worldimpact.org/events/cob2/cob2.html)

Keynote cassette tapes from "Crowns of Beauty: Planting Urban Churches"
available from World Impact (click here)

Key Seminar cassette tape from "Crowns of Beauty: Planting Urban Churches"
available from World Impact (click here)

For further information…

	Update Church Planting Letter from Paster Joe September 12, 2000
	Pastor Joe Wittwer's letter to area congregations July 19, 2000
	Church Planting- Introduction
	Why We Need to Plant New Churches
	Planting Urban Churches and Crowns of Beauty Conferences
	Let's Stop Planting Sterile Churches!
	Church Planting Movements