World Impact’s vision is to empower urban leaders to powerfully advance God’s Kingdom in urban areas across America. In order to advance God’s Kingdom in the city, healthy urban churches must be planted. Each of these churches requires urban leaders that require support and training in order to accomplish this purpose. The Evangel School of Urban Church Planting is one of the main vehicles through which we make this happen.
Evangel Schools are a dedicated time to focus on theology, ministry models and strategy for urban church planting. During the training, our missionaries and ministry partners guide urban church plant teams through planning, assessment, times of prayer, worship and devotional teachings. To thrive in their efforts, urban church planters must adopt a clear theological vision and choose a sound, culturally sensitive model and expression of the church. They must apply biblical wisdom to evangelize effectively, equip, and empower unreached city folk to respond to the love of Christ, and take their place in representing Christ’s Kingdom where they live and work.
One attendee when describing her experience at an Evangel School says, “Attending the Evangel School of Urban Church Planting imparted a sense of confidence within me to plant a church… For me this meant that God could really be leading me to plant a church and that doing so could be successful. In a nutshell, Evangel gave me courage.”
Another pastor shared that he has been to a few church planting conferences and they were all good but were lacking one huge component for him. The component he felt was missing was the belief that the urban poor can and should be empowered to lead church. The unchurched urban poor is arguably the most unreached people group in America, and this pastor (and World Impact) believes that this is the group that will lead the charge in planting churches in some of the hardest and most forgotten-about cities.
In 2016, World Impact hosted six Evangel Schools of Urban Church Planting across the country. Through these schools, 32 teams were equipped and trained to effectively launch a church plant. Eighteen of the teams were commissioned to begin a church in partnership with World Impact. These schools also trained 11 new Deans, who will go back to their communities and host Evangel Schools. We look forward to seeing urban church leaders and church plants multiply as a result of Evangel! We believe that through Evangel School and other initiatives, we have a fighting chance to plant and partner with over 300 churches in the next five years. Our driving passion is to see entire communities transformed by the message and power of the gospel of Jesus Christ, through the local church.
Click here to see if there is an Evangel School being hosted near you!
