A Declining Church Became a Sending Church

Send Network tells the story of Golden Avenue Church, a congregation in decline by 2019 that renewed under Pastor Jeffrey Stoneking and this Easter planted River Fellowship in rural Shannon County, Missouri. Harley Mottsenbocker pastors the plant, and he states the conviction behind it plainly.

Churches plant churches. People don't plant churches.

— Harley Mottsenbocker, via Send Network

Stoneking, whose church did the sending, is just as plain about the cost.

It's not for the faint of heart.

— Jeffrey Stoneking, via Send Network

I hear the same objection all over Iowa: we're too small to plant, or too far gone. Golden Avenue was both, and renewal came first, then sending grew out of it into a rural county that looks a lot like ours. If your church has quietly written itself off, start here.