Wow – I just finished looking over the Arkansas Conference’s “New Church Initiative (pdf file),” and I am extremely impressed! After proposing a new initiative in 2003, Arkansas has adopted six “strategic initiatives” that they hope will eventually lead to 55 new faith communities by the year 2013.

Our bishop has expressed interest in starting new faith communities in our conference as well, in line with the current emphasis from the Council of Bishops, so I look forward to seeing something like this for our conference in the years ahead.