The Growing Need

Consider the following….

You and I are sent to Papua New Guinea to reach a small, specific region of the country. Your missionary team discovers that in the section of the country you’ve been assigned, there are 200 different people groups. The goal is to plant the gospel, make new disciples, and see churches emerge. You realize quickly that it is not a viable solution to plant a church and expect people from all these groups to come. There are way too many cultural barriers for them to all come and learn together. So, your team sends dedicated missionaries to each of the 200 tribes to plant a micro church. That is how you plant the gospel so that each tribe hears the Good News.

Here is the West, we are living in the aftermath of the fragmentation and disintegration of the traditional biological family. People are building their own extended families – tribes and entourages – which are often built around a focused niche of shared interests.

The digital age, the fragmentation of the family, and the mobility of our society has tribalized our culture, creating hundreds of very distinct ‘tribes’ of people in every community, who are culturally very different from one another.

The cultural band that we can reach in a weekend service in the large gathering model is shrinking because of this diversification and tribalization. Enter: Micro Church.

The Hub

KC Underground has partnered with Stadia on micro-church movements, and has worked with a Stadia project manager to create a project management list that lines up well with what Stadia uses in the prevailing model.

The Hub is meant to function as the mission agency to launch, sustain, and multiply missionaries and micro churches. It is comprised of an apostolically-gifted team utilizing a shared space to fuel and equip a network of micro churches in a city or region.

Many large churches are perfectly positioned to create a Hub to launch missionaries and micro churches. They have large numbers of interested and activated Christ Followers, who would be interested in being equipped for such a mission.   Large churches have a much higher likelihood to think about scale, city-impact, and multiplication.  Launching a “hub” within their structures as skunkworks is an amazing way to begin a missionary movement in a city. 

The Cohort with KC Underground & Stadia

While there are still many thousands of people who will resonate with what is offered in the large gathering model – that number is shrinking, not growing. Now is the time to provide highly contextualized expressions of church for every unreached pocket of people in our city.

We are still in beta with the Hub Launch Cohort with Stadia, so we don’t have a slick brochure yet. But, we do have a lot to offer:

• Access to join a small cohort of like-minded practitioners from around the country, who are committed to launching hubs to launch a movement of missionaries and microchurches in their city.
• Weekly coaching calls with Myron Pierce, Brian Johnson, and myself,  10-11:30am CST on Thursdays.
• All access to the architecture and tools of Every Inner City/Mission Church and the KC Underground.
• An online course that provides a basic framework for the journey.  We will cover:
  • Vision:  Gospel Saturation in a City
  • Organizing Identities of a Hub (Missionary, Microchurch, Collectives, and Hubs)
  • Disciple-Making Culture and Tools
  • Missionary Formation Culture and Tools (The Missionary Pathway)
  • Creating a Culture for Decentralized Leadership
  • Creating Catalytic Gatherings (Equipping Huddles and Microchurches)
  • Forming Equipping Teams to equip Missionaries and Microchurches
    • Personal Discovery (Calling, Team Development, Soul Care)
    • Start-Up Coaching
    • On-Going Coaching
    • Financial Services/Entrepreneurial Endeavors
    • Media Services
    • Family (Children, Students, Parenting)
    • Worship
  • Raising Support
  • Marketing and Branding

The micro church provides the laboratory for the missionary work. It is scalable, adaptable, and proximate enough to get to every unreached pocket of people.