The Dunkin' Donuts Church

There have been some rumors being spread around MERCYhouse these days. Rumors that we're hoping and praying for a whole lot of churches to be planted and a whole lot of people to be in them. Last week someone told me "I heard MERCYhouse is going to plant 200 churches in 4 years". I knew at this point that we had a problem.

A good problem in fact. Imagine a church that gossips about church planting. Well imagine no more, MERCYhouse is such a church. It all started this summer with some brainstorming and prayer in the month of June. I was praying and so were others about the longer term dreams at MERCYhouse. Here are the beginnings of that vision.

Our prayer is that 10% of our immediate area would be reached for Christ by 2020. That's a total of about 10,000 people. If you haven't noticed, we live in an area with fewer Christians than some regions in China. 10% would be a major move of God in our area. So... we've got this God sized prayer request, now what.

Well, like most prayer requests, we have to consider if there are ways that we could cooperate with God in his work toward making this happen. Our answer? A church planting movement. If God is to reach into the hearts and lives of 10,000 people in our area, that means they are going to have to be gathered into a church in order to find Christ and find community. I don't think MERCYhouse has the parking for such a crowd. I also don't think people in the northeast are really into the whole mega church thing anyway.

Case in point - Dunkin' Donuts. I used to drink a few cups of their coffee every month two years ago. Now I drink multiple cups every week. What happened? Other than a growing addiction to caffeine, they erected one of their temples to the caffeine god practically in my backyard. I can walk there in 3 minutes. It's right next to my grocery store and my bank and the post office. Places I'd be going anyway.

So far we've got five DD stores in Amherst and Hadley alone and there are probably plans for more. You may wonder why they don't just put up a Dunkin' Donuts Supercenter on route 9 and be done with it. It's because they know that putting smaller stores in the crossroads of people's well worn paths is a better strategy for selling really good cups of coffee and stale donuts. So what's the point?

It illustrates one of the reasons we think a church planting movement is how we could best cooperate with God as He reaches into our valley. We could start a TV ministry, advertise on billboards, build a Jesus supercenter on route 9 and I think we might could grow to a whopping 500 people. It would be exciting but what would it really accomplish in the grand scheme of things.

Instead, our prayer is that we'd see 50 churches planted by the year 2020. If those churches grew to an average of MERCYhouse's size right now, we'd see 10,000 people reached for Christ and gathered into community. It will start slow but grow exponentially. Some churches will grow bigger others will stay smaller. Some won't make it and some will seem like the rock stars of the movement. The goal is not the "success" of individuals or churches but instead our cooperation with God's work here in the valley.

You'll be hearing more about this in the coming weeks and months. Begin (or continue) praying with us that God would awaken our valley and that we would be attentive to His invitation to get involved.