Becoming a Spiritual Grandparent

From Nick Parsons, Director of Recruitment

Even though I am only 34 years old, I recently experienced the joy of becoming a grandparent. Before you start doing math on the ages of my wife and daughter, know that I am talking about being a “church planting grandparent,” not a physical grandparent! Let me explain…

Seven years ago, I had the joy of helping start Mustard Seed Christian Church in Nagoya, Japan. Two years later, this church planted a new “daughter church” in Osaka, Japan, also called Mustard Seed, with both churches supported by Orchard Group. In the past year, this “daughter church” helped start another new church in Kobe, Japan — making it in some ways, the “granddaughter church” of the original church in Nagoya. Now the Nagoya church and the Osaka church are working together to plant another new church in Kyoto, Japan!

This is one of the best things about investing in dynamic new churches with a built-in vision for planting future churches. These initial investments will continue to bear fruit for generations: churches will start churches, and disciples will make disciples. Often investments in new churches will continue to bear fruit much longer, and in much wider ways, than we could ever imagine.

Recently, two churches started by Orchard Group, Renaissance Church in Harlem (2014) and Mosaic Christian Church outside of Baltimore (2008) worked together with other partnering churches to start Pro Deo Church in Cape Town, South Africa. I doubt people who invested in these two churches in Harlem and Baltimore ever imagined that their investment would be making a difference in South Africa—but I am sure they are pleased it is!

Here at Orchard Group, we are incredibly grateful for partners and people who make contributions to church planting. While we can track many of the results of investing in church planting, we know that we are barely scratching the surface. We won’t know until heaven just how far our investments went.