Search Party is a 501(c)3 Colorado non-profit organization formed for the purpose of starting discipleship movements and church planting movements among unreached people groups. We work to find, train, and coach people to follow Jesus Christ and teach others to do the same.

Our organization will continually evolve, but are growing as an implementation of the Great Commission Pipeline, raising up effective disciple-making workers in our home cities and, as the Holy Spirit leads, moving them into places where they can reach those with little access to the Gospel.

Following the development of these movements, we will look for opportunities within the newly formed movements to develop communities who are healthy spiritually, physically, and emotionally as a sustaining witness in the communities where they live.

About our ministry work

Our team uses a process called the Four Fields to do our discipleship and church planting work. It provides a structure that we believe comes from Jesus’s teaching and was followed by the Apostle Paul as he planted churches. We use it to think about the steps that we want to take to see a discipleship and church planting movements spring up in the areas where we are working. Here, we will use the Four Fields to describe more of the specifics of the work that we do:

Field 1 – The Empty Field

Empty fields are places where the Gospel has not entered. This could be as small as a family or a group of friends who have not heard the Gospel all of the way up to a city, a people group, or a country where Jesus is not yet known.

To enter into empty fields, here are a few components of our ministry:

• Short-Term Teams – Teams are sent out to pray for and identify new people who are open to hearing the Gospel.
• Internships – Like the Short-Term Teams, interns engage in prayer for people and finding those who are open to hearing the Gospel.
• Generation Maps – Through our direct relationships, and those with whom we are working, we train people to look for places where people are far from God.
• Prayer Walking – We routinely go out to pray and ask God where he is working, looking for opportunities to pray for others and share with them as we go.
• Community Garden – The community garden program is designed as a safe place for community members to work and learn, taking physical food, emotional and physical well-being, and spiritual nourishment away from their experience.
• Bike Repair Shop – While still in development, the bike shop will help provide essential transportation needs for immigrants and refugees. We plan for the bike shop to become a reality as we open a new multi-purpose community center.
• Social Media Ministry – People search for answers online, so we are also developing media to find empty fields online with whom we can eventually connect offline. More information coming soon!

Field 2 – Sowing Gospel Seed

We sow Gospel seed as we share our testimonies of God’s work in our lives or we share the Gospel, God’s story of grace and forgiveness for our reunification with him. We do this in several ways:

• Short-Term Teams and Interns share their testimonies or the Gospel as they create new relationships within the cities where we are working.
• New disciples share the Gospel with people on their Generation Maps.
• As the media ministry is developed, we will share the Gospel with people online, looking for people who are seeking a relationship with God.

Field 3 – Reproducing Disciples

For new disciples who respond to the Gospel, we want to see them grow to maturity. This primarily happens through 3/3rds Groups, studying the Word of God and putting it into action. 3/3rds Groups can take place anywhere, including a park, a cafe, or in a home. One of the locations that we will offer our leaders to lead 3/3rds Groups are in a new community center.

Field 4 – Reproducing Churches

3/3rds Groups mature from being discipleship groups to becoming churches. These new churches are now led by local, indigenous leaders who follow basic Biblical patterns of church development. These churches are responsible for continuing to move ahead, reproducing new leaders and teaching them to return to Fields 1, 2, and 3 for the purpose of starting new churches.

Training and Leadership Development

The Search Party team prays for and trains new leaders, similar to this Gospel Conversations training. Partnering with local churches and ministries, Search Party has a center that we use for leading training events. We also lead similar training times through a combination of online and offline events, using translations of Zume Training to train new, local leaders to begin working through the Four Fields process described above.