This Easter, Cornerstone Community Church, Orangeburg, will see its plant in nearby Bamberg begin Sunday services, launching a church initiative to plant 2,000 multiethnic churches in smaller communities across the nation’s Bible Belt.
Cornerstone pastor Artie DavisCornerstone pastor Artie Davis said the church will identify communities “from Texas to South Carolina, Virginia to Florida” for the new plants. Communities will have populations no larger than 35,000, and the churches will be multiethnic, contemporary in worship style, and unique to the communities where they are planted.
“Our church has a heart for the smaller communities – the last great mission field, which is being neglected,” Davis said. “We have a heart for people who are dying, spiritually, and there is no fresh bread in the community for them. The spiritual temperature is freezing.”
Davis said he laments some of the thinking among today’s church planters.
“Church planters start out with a heart for God, but many want to go to the big cities and be the next great national preacher,” Davis said. “That’s not going to happen. When did going to a smaller community and doing the work of the Lord leave such a bad taste in our mouths? If we plant a church that grows to 500 in a community of 5,000, we have won that city to the Lord. People will want to win families, friends, and co-workers and pull them to the excitement. A church like that will be the most exciting thing in town.”
Paul Welch, director of missions, Orangeburg-Calhoun Baptist Association, said, “The intention of starting 2,000 new works in micropolitan and rural areas is one of the most exciting concepts I’ve ever seen. This is actually, in some ways, the last and greatest mission field in North America.”
Davis calls this initiative Pray 2K (www.pray2K.com): “A passionate movement to plant multiethnic and culturally relevant churches in smaller communities.”
Simply, Cornerstone plans to use social media and other outlets to drive people to the Pray 2K Web site, where site guests can find their city and sign up for a plant team. A core of 22 people, in a city, will be organized with a leadership team of five. The leadership team will include a local senior pastor who will receive personal and organizational support through The Comb Network (www.thecombnetwork.com).
“Pray 2K will identify places and people,” Davis said, “and The Comb Network will coach, train, empower, and resource the plant as a house church, initially, and then toward a public launch.” Both Pray 2K and The Comb Network will become separate non-profit organizations as ministries of Cornerstone, Davis said.
The senior pastor of each plant will be from the local community. “We know the pastor will not have a Bible degree, but He will have Jesus. We are looking for men with heart and not necessarily men with training. We will have a one-year training program for the pastor and then cut him loose. We are not going to transplant a Bible student somewhere.”
Davis said each new church will be expected to plant another church. “We can’t stop at our Jerusalem; God intends for the church to be reproducing.”
Cornerstone will use its own DNA as a model.
Davis is the original planter of Cornerstone and a native of Orangeburg. Since 1995, the church has grown from meeting in his own home to a rented gymnastics facility to a 15-acre campus and now to renovated 55,000-square-foot Winn Dixie Superstore. The church has 1,500 to 1,700 people attending on Sundays in an Orangeburg community Davis estimates as “13,000 in size.”
Cornerstone is also a multiethnic church, and that multiethnicity is important to Davis and is a core value of the church. “Orangeburg is a very multiethnic community, and I stand firm that a church must be on the inside what the community looks like on the outside. That’s how we know we are reaching the community.” – SCBC