EMQ » January–March 2020 » Volume 56 Issue 1
By William J. Sundstrom
The vision of planting one healthy, multiplying church for every 1,000 people in the world drives GACX, a global alliance for church multiplication.
Candy Marballi of The Prayer Covenant could hardly wait to attend her first GACX Global Forum in 2018, where she would participate in the children’s ministry intensive. During the workshop she came across people who shared her vision, such as DJ Bosler of GameLife123 and Gary Strudler of Kids Around the World. “My heart soared as I met others who had a focus on kingdom-minded collaboration,” says Candy.
Such collaboration lies at the heart of GACX, a global alliance for church multiplication. GACX members partner around a very specific goal: plant one missional, multiplying and sustainable church for every 1,000 people in the world, such that every person everywhere would have the chance to follow Jesus. And not only do member organizations collaborate – network leaders themselves connect with similar networks, such as Vision 5:9, the 24:14 Coalition, and GCPN.
“Our role is to find out who is doing what work, where, and with whom,” says Nate Vander Stelt, executive vice president of GACX, “and to discover where the gospel is not present. Then we seek to advance the gospel through mutual collaboration, resulting in new churches and missional communities.”
“For anyone trying to reach unreached people groups,” adds David Nelms of The Timothy Initiative (TTI), “GACX is a gold mine. These are our people, with the same heart, the same passion. It’s a bigger pool to fish from for partnerships.”
The roots of GACX go back to 2010, when Campus Crusade for Christ International appointed Bekele Shanko of Ethiopia as a global vice president and asked him to help establish a new division for church planting (which would become Global Church Movements, or GCM).
A few months later, God impressed on Bekele and his team a goal: plant an additional five million churches. With nearly five billion non-Christians in the world at the time, that meant one church for every 1,000 people.
As Bekele began thinking and praying about the vastness of the world, he felt the Holy Spirit whispering, “You are not the only one serving my purpose. Your organization is not the only one involved in the Great Commission. Go and work with others.”
Soon Bekele and his team began meeting others with similar goals: Dynamic Church Planting International wanted to plant five million churches, TTI two million, Northland Church one million, and Christ’s Commission Fellowship (CCF) of the Philippines 200,000.
Bekele had seen the power of partnership during his years leading the ministry in Africa. “Partnerships are all about, ‘What can we do together?’” he says, “Not, ‘How can you help me?’” And he knew Jesus wanted unity among His followers.
So in September 2011 he asked these four organizations, plus GCM, if they could collaborate. That Holy Spirit inspired moment led to GACX, which today has grown to eighty-six member organizations and generated numerous vibrant partnerships.
Bride Before Brand
Such collaboration avoids duplication of effort. For example, John Becker, GACX vice president of global networking and partnership, tells a story from his time serving in the Sahel of Africa. Different mission organizations would come and train local believers. Yet every new group trained the same people. Local Christians barely had time to apply one church-planting strategy when someone would launch a training with a different strategy.
After GACX began, John and others cast vision for a war-torn region in the Sahel and two groups responded: CCF and TTI. AIM provided relationships on the ground and helped with funding, while CCF and TTI offered church-planting training and coaching. In order to avoid training the same people, they coordinated efforts via monthly meetings, and even shared databases on who they were training.
“What is driving this,” says John, “is that we want to be good stewards of the resources God has given us. Our goal is to see churches multiply, not our brand expanded. It doesn’t really matter what label is on it – the Bride of Christ is more important than our brand.”
Nevertheless, partnerships are not easy, and trust is critical. Just as in a marriage, partners must trust each other and join with someone moving in the same direction. The strong relationships built at the GACX Global Forum lead to this kind of trust.
However, communication is still a challenge. “We have healthy pathways to collaboration,” says Nate Vander Stelt, “but we need to help people find those pathways, so we have more effective indigenous organic leadership.” Nate also sees the need for better internal and external communication.
Accelerators and Implementers
Two types of groups become members of GACX: accelerators who provide resources, tools or funds, and implementers with workers in the field planting churches. Both groups must be active in multiple nations, and all must have a willingness to share the tools, strategies, and methods God has given.
This unity and spirit of sharing leads to more effective ministry. As Bekele puts it, “One organization’s critical needs are another organization’s available resources. Through strategic partnerships, these two elements are brought together and matched toward addressing common challenges.”
Candy Marballi discovered this at her first Global Forum. That meeting led to GameLife123 developing ten unique, biblically based games for The Prayer Covenant’s ten themes, while Kids Around the World provided oral versions of the stories that The Prayer Covenant used in each of its themes. The result? Greater multiplication of work with children.
This spirit of generosity and serving one another captures the ethos of GACX. In fact, most GACX activities can be summed up in three words: Share, Collaborate, and Multiply. “We share critical information like where our teams and churches are located and what resources we have available,” says John Becker. “And we build relationships as we travel and minister together, which in turn grow our shared vision.”
The shared vision leads to collaboration, which spreads best practices and demonstrates that one plus one is greater than two. Then sharing and collaboration done well lead to multiplication.
“In the past we had to be a jack-of-all-trades,” says Nathan Shank, a church planter in Asia with the International Mission Board. “But these days, through partnership, an organization doesn’t have to become an expert in every component of ministry. Instead of each group having to innovate and come to their own solutions, there are already a myriad of solutions out there.”
Much of this collaboration takes place at the annual GACX Global Forum, which this year drew more than three hundred leaders from some one hundred fifty organizations. “I see two things going on at the GACX Forum,” says missions leader Steve Addison. “First, people walk through the door and discover they are not alone. The plenary sessions reinforce that with vision and stories of breakthroughs. But around that are hundreds of interactions between participants. And you can maintain an online partnership for a long time if you had some quality encounters face to face.”
Case Study: Chad
As people have visited the Forum, several have gone home and started regional or national alliances. For example, in 2017 Tamadji Moyalbaye of Chad attended the Forum. He wanted to establish a similar alliance in Chad, but several denominations were not on speaking terms.
Nevertheless, Tamadji called together leaders of key churches and denominations. Some four hundred fifty leaders came together, and Bekele Shanko spoke to them on unity. Though he knew nothing of the history of the church in Chad, Bekele asked participants to stand up, find at least one person from another denomination, greet that person, then declare, “We are one in Christ!”
At that very moment, God started a process of healing. “I like what you are saying,” one leader said to Bekele, “But we cannot work together because we are deeply divided and wounded. How can you help us?”
At that moment another leader began walking toward the brother who had asked the question. Kneeling before the man, he grabbed his feet and said, “My brother, I am the problem in our country. Please, would you forgive me?” Bekele knelt, took the hands of the two brothers, and prayed, asking God for forgiveness and mercy.
As he finished, another man stood, walked across the room to someone and also asked for forgiveness. The next day twenty-two denominational presidents stood with Bekele on the stage, holding hands and declaring, “We are one in Christ. We reject division and commit ourselves to working together for the glory of God.”
The Holy Spirit had begun a process of healing, forgiveness, and reconciliation that continues to this day.
Today these leaders send multi-denominational teams to unreached areas proclaiming the gospel. People who until recently could not be in the same room together now work side by side planting churches.
This is the dream of GACX. Nine years ago, a fledging alliance set a goal of planting an additional five million churches. As of December 31, 2018, GACX members had planted 1,629,564 churches globally, most of which hope to multiply themselves. Through partnership and multiplication, the goal of five million is well within reach.
For more information, please visit gacx.io.
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Bill Sundstrom has served as director of communications with his organization in both Latin America and Western Europe. Currently editorial director of Global Church Movements, he is a past editor of Worldwide Challenge magazine and holds a master’s degree in strategic communication from the University of Missouri School of Journalism.
