Cultivate new worshiping communities, which could include
a. Nesting a new immigrant or multiracial congregation or alternate worshiping community in our building/church
b. Providing worship at alternative times other than on Sunday morning
c. Creating a vesper service on Sunday evenings
d. Planting a new church in another part of Winston-Salem
e. Giving money to ECO’s church planting initiatives
Updates
June 2019 Update
Mike Horne and Tim Norton continue to work with others in our denomination on various church multiplication strategies. The next step is to form a discernment and study team to examine who we might engage in church planting.
August 2018 Update
Our strategic initiative to Plant a New Worshipping Community is in line with First Presbyterian Church’s historic commitment to missions, church planting, and the replication of disciples.
Our beginning steps to address this initiative include:
- Tim Norton, our new Associate Pastor for Mission, has joined the ECO Presbytery of North Carolina’s Church Planting Team in order to support the current church plants in North Carolina and engage in the denomination-wide commitment to church planting.
- Financial and relational support of the two church plants in our Presbytery: Christ the Word Church in Wake Forest, NC and Hope Community Church in Wilmington, NC.
Our next step will be to bring together a team for concentrated discernment and prayer about how best to express our missional identity in a changing cultural landscape. This team will start its discernment work in 2019. The options they will explore and pray about include, but are not limited to:
- Nesting an immigrant or multicultural congregation
- Planting a new church
- Continuing to provide financial support to ECO’s church planting initiatives.
- Exploring partnering with or becoming a Church Planting Hub in ECO.
- Providing an alternative worship service other than Sunday morning
After a period of prayer, discussion, and exploration, this team will recommend the next step in the discernment process to the Session. The hopeful goal is to discern a clear call from God about His direction for us by 2020.
January 2018 Update
- We expect this initiative to gain traction and be pursued further in 2019-2020
- Our new Associate Pastor for Missions will provide significant support to this initiative