About 3,000 years ago, King David had a song about the beauty and goodness of brotherly love and unity. About 2,000 years ago, our Lord Jesus Christ commanded us to love one another and prayed for our unity. About two weeks ago, 162 mission leaders representing 72 organizations and 20 countries experienced this kind of love and unity at Grace Church in Eden Prairie, Minnesota. GACX Forum 2015 brought together leaders who believe that God’s Kingdom is bigger and more important than our individual organizations. During the forum we celebrated our God-given unity, encouraged and learned from each other, initiated partnerships, and joyfully shared resources toward our common goal. As an alliance, we desire to be a catalyst for planting five million healthy, multiplying, and sustainable churches and faith communities.

Here are some highlights:

  • Grace Church provided an excellent environment for the forum
  • Speakers like David Watson, Paul Eshleman, Brad Smith, Troy Dobbs, Scott Ridout, Marcia Malzahn, Craig Lawrence and many others shared from their heart with deep conviction
  • Reported so far, a total of 52 partnerships have been initiated
While some of the reported partnerships are renewal and expansion of ongoing partnerships, most of them are new.

Examples of partnerships that have been initiated at the forum have included:

  • to go together to countries where nothing or less is happening regarding church planting movements,
  • church planting organizations to work together with disciple-making and leadership development organizations so as to increase the quality of churches, and
  • to share key contacts, experiences and other resources with one another.
Another example of a partnership that was initiated during the forum was GACX and GCPN to intentionally work together toward facilitating regional and national alliances so that duplication of efforts are minimized and unique contributions are maximized. Since the launching of GACX in September 2011, the number of organizations and leaders are doubling every year. Therefore, it is realistic to expect about 300 leaders representing over 100 organizations to attend the GACX Forum in 2016. But our desire should not be only to increase the numbers but also:
  • implementation of the partnerships we have initiated,
  • quality of the churches we help to plant,
  • processes of training and coaching we do, and
  • the accuracy of the strategic information we gather and analyze;
  • so that we help plant churches that are biblical, multiplying, locally sustainable, and making righteous impact in their communities.
Indeed, “How good and pleasant it is when God’s people live together in unity!” (Psalm 133:1)
It is my earnest prayer that the Lord will multiply the eternal impact of our partnerships.