Our vision is to see the Gospel transform everything – ourselves as individuals, our church, our city, and the world.
By 2020, we desire to see that vision expressed in our church as a body of thousands of people, gathering in locations throughout the Louisville area, and planting churches all over the world that draw many more un-churched people into a relationship with God.
He who was seated on the throne said, “I am making everything new!”
—Revelation 21:5
Why Don’t We Just Plant Churches Instead Of Open New Sojourn Campuses?
Our decision between multi-site and church planting is not either/or. It’s both/and.
Sojourn has raised up many church planters and we are actively planning to raise up many more. This is in our church DNA; it’s reflected in our budget and in the amount of time we spend training planters, holding classes, accepting interns and mentoring future planters.
Former Sojourners are responsible for new and upcoming church plants everywhere from Ohio to Texas in the United States, along with communities in foreign countries. Locally, we are partnering with former Sojourn elder Todd Robertson, who just planted Antioch Church in the south end of Louisville. We have also trained six men as part of a church planter residency program over the last year.
We also support church plants through the Acts 29 church planting network, of which Pastor Daniel is the Director for the Southeast region of the United States. We have directly supported The Oaks Community Church, a young plant in a struggling, blue collar city in Ohio. We have planted three Louisville churches so far in our short existence, and we continue to work with our plant on the east end of Louisville, Crossing Community Church.
On the other hand, we have thoroughly explored the multi-campus approach in the scriptures as well as in the experiences of sister churches who have pursued this model, like Mars Hill Church of Seattle and Summit Church of Durham, North Carolina. We will not copy their models directly but their struggles and successes do inform us as we decide what this model should look like for us in Louisville.
More importantly, we have searched the Scriptures and prayed. We searched the Scriptures and prayed some more. We researched, discussed as pastors, prayed some more, etc… Our main driving force was not practical wisdom. This has been (and continues to be) a long, prayer-filled process. This is where God is leading us as pastors.
Brothers and sisters, thanks in large part to the work of the Spirit in each and every one of you, the name “Sojourn” means something in Louisville. Whether people are for us or against us, the name “Sojourn” stands for an unwavering commitment to the Bible, an uncompromising drive to work for the good of this city and the advancement of the coming Kingdom, a passion to celebrate and redeem the arts and culture, and a love for “the least of these.” (Matthew 25:40). Because of this, many people want to be Sojourners – more people than can fit in one roof.
Unfortunately in these days, it’s hard to know what a person or a church mean by the term “Christian.” Besides the fact that current members of the Sojourn family live all over Louisville and Southern Indiana, we know that many more people in various parts of the region are “reachable” by Sojourn – a church that embodies the passions described in the paragraph above and that desires to contextualize the gospel in any neighborhood that it reaches. This is a big reason to consider opening Sojourn campuses in different neighborhoods. There will be no second-class Sojourn campuses. People will know that when they step into a Sojourn campus, they are entering into the worship of a congregation that is Christian in the true, Biblical sense of the word.
We also know of many solid Christian churches in this city. We’ll continue working with them, as we did in 2009’s Beauty For Ashes Conference – big and small churches, city and suburban churches, and churches of various ethnic and racial backgrounds. We don’t want to put any of them “out of business.” We believe that the rising tide of the gospel lifts all ships that are faithful to the proclamation of the gospel.
These churches can reach some people that we can’t reach. But Sojourn can reach people that they can’t and aren’t reaching, too. The evidence of this is in how many people come to our campuses each week, and how fast we continue to grow – too much and too fast for our buildings to contain everyone.
