Mission 120

In 2013, the state ministries of Ohio, Michigan, and Indiana, and Healthy Growing Churches forged a partnership to spark a multiplication movement in the region. This partnership has indeed sparked a critical conversation that is leading more and more churches who are making disciples who make disciples and reproducing by starting other new churches.

We have learned that if we are going to continue to see this kind of multiplication continue and gain momentum we need an engine. That engine is disciple making churches! To see this engine continue to develop in the region we needed the number of disciple making churches to increase rapidly. Therefore, the latest development in our regional partnership is the Mission 120 Initiative. Mission 120 is a venture to raise up and resource 120 disciple making churches in Ohio, Michigan, and Indiana. The goal is to see 40 of those churches in Indiana, 60 in Ohio, and 20 in Michigan.

This is not a program. This is not a silver bullet.

However, we believe this venture will accelerate the number of churches in Indiana and our partner states that have clear pathways for disciple making to multiple generations. We also believe this kind of intentional disciple making will lead to church start other churches. We felt it was very important to define two important phrases as we embarked on the journey of raising up 120 disciple making churches. Those phrases are biblical disciples and disciple making churches. We define those this way:

Biblical Disciples are:

Intentionally following Jesus
Being changed by Jesus
Engaging the mission of Jesus

Disciple Making Churches...

Are led by disciple making pastors
Have a relational pathway for disciple making
Raise up disciples who make disciples, who make disciples
Send disciples into the mission of Jesus

The main thrust of this initiative are learning communities of pastors we call Mission 120 cohorts. These cohorts meeting monthly for ninety minutes via Zoom. Each of the six sessions are intentionally designed to help pastors designed a pathway and vehicle for disciple making that gets to multiplication generations of reproduction.

In January of 2020, we launched our first wave of Mission 120 cohorts with the leadership of Jon Wiest from Groundswell. Forty-four pastors from the region have formed six Mission 120 cohorts. We have fifteen Indiana pastors involved in two cohorts. Once theses pastors have finished their Mission 120 cohort journey, we will leverage their leadership to launch a second wave of cohorts in September of 2020. Once this second wave is launched, we will have 120 churches well on their way to becoming disciple making churches!

Would you like to hear more about the Mission 120 initiative or how your church can get involved in a cohort in the fall of 2020? Tom Planck, Indiana Ministries multiplication director, would love to connect with you. You can start that conversation by sending him an email using this link.