Overview

Up to now, Search Party’s strategy was simply our ministry: we made disciples and planted churches. While I believe that this will always be the case as we continue to obey Jesus, we also find ourselves transitioning into helping other people do the same, who will themselves also go on to help still others do the same. That shift has opened important questions about what Search Party’s strategy actually is, and how we need to organize as a ministry to support people doing this multiplying work well. As a leader, this has meant reflecting on how the organization should structure itself and what it is meant to do: how to help the flesh — the living, multiplying work — actually grow, and what bones need to be in place to support and sustain that growth over time.

Search Party’s strategy for multiplying disciples, leaders, and churches rests on two connected parts: the flesh and the bones. This picture echoes Paul’s image of the body of Christ in 1 Corinthians 12 — many parts, one body, each one necessary and each one interconnected with the others.

However, for the purposes of Search Party’s strategy planning, I am specifically thinking about the flesh and the bones.

For the purpose this analogy, the flesh is the living, organic reality we are working to see multiply — networks of ministries, disciples, and churches spreading across cities, regions, countries, and peoples. It is relational, dynamic, and often unpredictable in shape, because it grows the way any living thing grows: through relationship, obedience, and the Spirit’s work in people.

On the other hand, the bones are structural elements that hold the up the flesh up and allows it keep growing rather than collapsing under its own weight. The bones are the training, coaching, hubs, teams, and tools that turn scattered momentum into something that can be sustainable and reproducible. A body without bones can’t stand, and bones without flesh are dead. Our desire is to build the bones so that the flesh can continue to multiply and grow.

Flesh: What We’re Multiplying

The flesh is the outcome we’re after — three layers of network that build upon and reinforce one another:

A network of ministries – I am largely referring to expat missionaries in this case, but even this definition has been challenged more recently as we have worked with immigrants and refugees who have gone on to build fully-developed, legal organizations for the purpose of their ministries, and yet are also fully aligned with Search Party, both in adopting the name as well as our vision. Regardless of their background, these ministries are catalytic disciple-makers and church planters who are working to help others learn to go on to make disciples and plant churches.

Today, we have a network of ministries in these locations:

• Catania, Italy
  • Reaching both immigrants and Italians in the Catania metro area
  • Partnering with a church in the Catania area for the purpose of sending workers on mission to other countries
  • Agape Bici and Missione Shiloh are local platform ministries that offer evangelistic outreach, discipleship and training for believers, and a foundational start for church planting.
• Rome, Italy

Networks of disciples – Simply stated, these are individual men and women who are following Jesus, learning to obey everything he commanded, who are connected to one another in relationships of accountability and encouragement and teaching others to do the same.

Networks of churches – Groups of disciples that go on to mature into churches, and churches that plant more churches, forming networks that can sustain themselves, govern themselves, and send from within their own ranks rather than depending indefinitely on outside support.

These three networks are meant to multiply together: ministries that catalyze disciples, disciples that group together to form churches, and churches that have a vision to make more disciples and plant more churches.

Bones: Supporting the Growth of the Body

The bones are the structural investments that make the flesh reproducible instead of a one-off. Already today at Search Party, these fall into four areas:

Training curriculum

A shared body of teaching that equips disciples and leaders at every stage, including:

• Four Fields discipleship and church planting — A framework for entering new areas, sowing the seed of the Gospel, discipling new believers, and multiplying churches.
• Finding Your Purpose in God’s Plan — Helping believers identify and enter into God’s missional plan.
• Discipling Muslims — A training program in development to help Christians in relating and discipling people from a Muslim background.
• Finances in the church and the mission — A training program in development regarding the ongoing sustainability in the Biblical management of finances, both for local churches and in participating in God’s mission.

In addition, we are in discussions with potential partners for pastoral theological training — deeper, reproducible theological training and formation for those leading churches or networks of churches.

Apostolic Band

A team of trained and sent-out leaders who model the Four Fields discipleship and church-planting pattern in the field, mentoring others directly, and carry the DNA of the multiplication strategy from place to place. The Apostolic Band is important for entry into low-access countries, allowing our team to either directly share the Gospel or work with local believers to teach and train them to be the primary disciple-makers and church planters with local responsibility and sustainability. A funding plan for the Apostolic Band is available in this proposal document.

Coaching plan

Today, our coaching plan relies specifically on generation maps, 1-3-9 discipling health checks, and checks related to church health. These are all fine as tools, but it will be important for us to have a specific coaching process that we will be able to teach as we go forward. This will be designed to help both expat missional team members, apostolic band teammates, and partner ministry leaders. This coaching plan is not yet formalized, but it is noted here as needed for our future ongoing development.

Hubs

Hubs are strategic physical locations that anchor the work regionally and serve as bases for training, sending, and support of local leaders in each country.

• Rome, Italy
• Baku, Azerbaijan
• Davao City, Philippines

Short-Term Teams

Teams that come alongside the hubs and long-term workers for defined periods, providing surge capacity, specific skills, or exposure that feeds the long-term pipeline of workers.

Online management tools

The digital infrastructure that lets a growing, distributed network actually run:

• Admin site — for organizational and operational management.
• Communication site — for keeping the network connected and informed.
• Tracks app — for tracking discipleship and church-planting progress across the network.

Why Both Matter

flesh without bones burns bright and fades — ministry momentum with no structure to sustain leaders, pass on training, or catch problems early. bones without flesh becomes bureaucracy for its own sake — process with nothing living running through it. Search Party’s strategy is to build the bones deliberately enough that the flesh can multiply without depending on any single person, hub, or moment of momentum, while keeping the bones light enough that they serve the flesh instead of constraining it.