America Ablaze, American Missionary Experience Emphasize Church Planting
America Ablaze is a 21st century strategy which contains a track for the Church of God to fulfill the Great Commission. America Ablaze is a church planting initiative of the Church of God which incorporates three major emphases: hosting church planting conferences, coaching and mentoring of prospective church planters and coordination of a relatively new initiative called the American Missionary Experience, or AMx.
According to Orville Hagan, America Ablaze consultant, the concept has a four dimensional strategy which includes 1) emphasis on the “Mother/Daughter” concept of church planting, which essentially means larger churches “mother” the new “daughter” churches; 2) training for all church planters. 3) launching of the pilot program of America Ablaze, where young people give one year or more of their lives on site as part of a church plant team and 4) conduct church revitalization for churches in existence that need a restart.
“Church planting and reaching the major cities of America begins with the Great Commission,” Hagan stated. “Jesus gave the church this divine mandate that has never been withdrawn.” The essence of the “Great Commission” is for Christians to bring people to a saving knowledge of Jesus Christ.
Training and equipping has been the emphasis of several recent conferences in which America Ablaze has partnered. In January 2010 a conference took place at the North Cleveland Church of God which attracted potential church planters of all ages who gathered for three days of intense instruction and information regarding the latest trends and concepts of church planting.
The American Missionary Experience is a concentrated and accelerated life and ministry formation experience designed to prepare and mobilize passionate followers of Christ to serve as missionaries. AMx provides a theo-centric process of living and learning for self-motivated individuals who are actively seeking to share their life destiny as servant-leaders. AMx is a holistic and cooperative approach for equipping the church and engaging the culture with the message of Jesus through the power of the Holy Spirit. The Mission Statement of AMx states that the organization will provide a supervised formational experience that fosters the discovery of ministry identity, the development of leadership gifting, and the deployment of vocational direction in order to produce American missionaries to carry the gospel to every aspect of culture/society. It asks the questions: “What has God called me to do?,” “What are my skills, talents, gifts, and calling for ministry? And “Where, when, and with whom will I serve?
The Vision Statement of AMx is “to assemble, train, mobilize, and send diverse teams of missionaries/church planters who are willing to serve anywhere, anytime, and in any way for the American harvest.”
In conjunction with the launch of AMx three pilot teams have been announced and they include
Lee Claypoole of The Bridge Church in Lexington, Ky., Ian Shaw from the Modern Life Church in Chattanooga, and Johnny Taylor of the Beyond Sunday Church of God in Fresno. Calif.
“Establishing new churches and properly training upcoming leaders in the concepts of how to do it is critical to every church organization,” Hagan stated. “In many ways, planting a church is like starting a business…there are essentials and techniques that will help make the startup more successful. And it doesn’t stop once the doors open.”
