One Year Later
by Rodney Arnold, Missionary Church President
Last month marked the one-year anniversary since the Missionary Church gave me the honor of a lifetime and I began serving as president of this incredible family of churches. When I began in this role just over 12 months ago, I continued praying a prayer that had sustained me through nearly 14 years of church planting and pastoring in the local church: “God, do something so great that only you can get the credit!”
While in some ways it feels like we are only getting started, as I prayerfully reflect on the past year, I can see with great clarity that our Lord is answering that prayer! The best is yet to come, and we have so much more to do, but here is a quick look at what God has done since last August — a quick look at what only He can get the credit for!
World Partners and the General Oversight Council (GOC) worked together to lower missionary fees to a flat 10%. This allowed nearly $140,000 of funds raised by missionaries to stay in the field rather than overhead costs. This will help to directly fund mission worldwide and recruit our next generation of missionaries.
Two new missionaries were sent to the field with several more currently in the onboarding process.
Across the US, 27 new churches were either planted or adopted to become new Missionary Church congregations, and 141 new ministers were either licensed or ordained!
International Missionary Church organizations began development in South Korea, Panama, and Costa Rica.
The Ministry Leadership Council (MLC) recommended changes to geographical regional boundaries to better align states that currently have no Missionary Church congregations. The GOC approved this change allowing me to challenge our regions to intentionally and strategically pray for and target these 19 states in our nation where the Missionary Church does not have a presence. Already two of those states have new works, with a church plant launching in Maryland next month and another one in the formation stages in Montana! Download the new regional map here to pray for each state and region!
The Northwest Region, which had only six active churches, became a district of Vinia (formerly Western Region), partnering with Vinia to develop an intentional strategy to see church health, revitalization, and planting across the Northwest lead to disciple and church multiplication. The goal is to one day relaunch the Northwest Region as a fully functioning, thriving region. The Northwest Region unanimously approved this change at their annual conference in May. Since then, a church plant is already in the works in Washington in the building of a since-closed Missionary Church in addition to the new plant forming in Montana.
As one step toward addressing our need to engage future leaders in the next generations, a new scholarship was established for Missionary Church students who attend Bethel University as ministry majors. Ten students received $2,000 each from the Missionary Church. Bethel University also reinstated the Missionary Church scholarship, granting our students of all majors an additional $1,500 scholarship to attend BU (dependents of pastors receive $2,500 each!). Bethel also hosted the first annual Missionary Church Day at BU and a Bethel University Day in the Missionary Church, while World Partners launched the World Partners Center for Global Engagement on BU’s campus alongside WP Missionaries in Residence, Jeremy and Mindy Tice. As a result of these many efforts to strengthen our tie and relationship with Bethel, 15% of students enrolled are now Missionary Church students, the most since 2015 and up significantly since dropping to just 10.8% in 2019. Of the freshman class, 15% are from the Missionary Church, the most in five years, while altogether Bethel’s freshman class enrollment for 2024-2025 increased 18% over last year, the most since 2021. Why does all this matter? Students from 32 states and 41 nations are currently enrolled at Bethel, giving us the opportunity to make a worldwide impact as we raise up and send out disciple makers, missionaries, and church leaders!
The MLC formed an Executive Team (aka committee) that has been working for nine months with the entirety of the MLC to evaluate where we are as a denomination and recommend next steps that will further collaboration among regions, clarify our vision and mission, and communicate clearly to regions and churches our shared strategies for reaching our cities, nation, and beyond! The survey participation of 300 ministers helped inform this work.
The MLC appointed a Church Multiplication Task Force to develop an intentional strategy for reclaiming our focus on church planting while continuing to advance disciple multiplication. This led to a revamped and reimagined Church Multiplication Training Center (CMTC) launching last month where 18 church plants from across the nation will receive 12 months of training, coaching, and resourcing. More than $60,000 of support will go directly to these 18 new church plants! Seven of these have already begun the CMTC process while the other 11 begin next week!
This task force recommended clarifying language that was approved by both the MLC and GOC for how we classify and count “churches” compared to “disciple-making communities.” Going forward, only groups that have each of the elements of what our constitution defines as a church will be counted as recognized churches. Until then, groups will be identified as and counted as disciple-making communities. Following this clarification, dozens of groups that had been classified as churches but had never chartered, never been approved by their region, or had not grown beyond a small group of less than 15 people were reclassified as disciple-making communities or closed. Those corrections, along with 27 new recognized churches being added, bring the current total to 481 legitimate Missionary Church congregations in the United States.
The task force also recommended that each region in the Missionary Church develop an intentional plan and strategy for church planting. Every regional director voted in favor of this plan, including a shared process for church planting across the nation to build trust in the process and to collaborate across regions. All 11 regions will present their church multiplication strategy in October. As a next step, the MLC will work to follow this same model for developing intentional strategies for church health and revitalization. Ten churches in Michigan are currently going through a “beta” process that could serve as a model for one method of church revitalization.
The GOC worked to clarify and reduce policies, audit legal organizational documents, approve national office staff restructuring, and begin moving toward a unified budget rather than departmental budgets (e.g., World Partners, Generate, etc.). These simplifications and clarifications are already allowing our national staff to serve our regions and churches with greater efficiency while saving thousands of dollars that can be put back into the mission as we strive to be the best stewards possible. This work also led to the Missionary Church receiving accreditation for the first time ever from the Evangelical Council for Financial Accountability (ECFA).
The MLC and GOC appointed a Credential Task Force to evaluate our current credentialing practices across the nation and to recommend potentially revamped credentialing classifications and processes. This team is working to propose a system that will bring better alignment across regions in terms of process and expectations while creating a development pathway for ministers at various levels and contexts from house church or lay leader to fully ordained congregation pastor and everything in between.
This list only shares some of what has taken place at a national level and doesn’t even begin to address the incredible ministry happening at the local church and regional levels. As I traveled around the country to each of our regional conferences over the past year, I was blown away at the creativity, sacrifice, and bold faith that is happening in every part of the country. That is why — without a doubt — we saw record baptism numbers last year as more people gave their lives to Jesus and engaged with his body, the local church!
Will you and your church please keep praying? When you pray for our denomination, you are praying bigger prayers than you realize! And will you and your church keep giving? When you give two percent of your church’s income to the Investment in Shared Ministry (ISM), when you and your church give to World Partners, and when you and your church give to Bethel, you are making all the things listed above (and more!) happen.
It has been an incredible — if not whirlwind — year that I am beyond thankful to have experienced with you and our leadership teams. I can’t wait to see what God has in store over the next twelve months! I’m praying that it will be so great only He can get the credit.
