Building Momentum With Multiply

“I was at the Multiply Conference, and I cannot remember the last time when I was as energized over the future of the Christian Reformed Church as I am right now.”

“It was so exciting to be a part of this event. To be at the beginning of what could be one of the most significant 10-year journeys for the CRC.”

Those are quotes from two different pastors—Lora Copley, talking to The Banner at the time of her appointment as the publication’s interim editor-in-chief; and Martin Spoelstra, a church planter in Ontario who wrote to The Banner’s news tip line. (It’s news@thebanner.org if you have a news lead to share.)

What they were excited about was a Nov. 8-11 conference hosted in Port St. Lucie, Fla., described by co-host Classis Southeast US as a way to “help catalyze a denomination-wide 10-year strategic plan for church planting (with) hopes to build momentum across the CRCNA.” Resonate Global Mission was the conference’s other partner.

A catalyst, in chemistry, is a substance that increases the rate of a chemical reaction. The metaphor could be extended in the case of Classis Southeast US to label the regional group of churches as the “initiator” and a “catalyst” in the current church-planting transformation in the CRC.

The classis sparked conversation and a resolution at Synod 2025 with its request “to prioritize church planting within the denominational budget.” Synod encouraged churches to “take an extra step to connect with Resonate in order to build support for church planting,” “check with their (connected) church planter(s) to find out if they have raised enough support,” and “encourage their classes to develop a church planting strategy or strengthen their current strategy in partnership with Resonate.” Further, at the prompting of Classis Southeast US delegate Scott Vander Ploeg, synod instructed “the Office of General Secretary to coordinate with agencies and the classes to develop a vision, plan, strategy, and financial proposal for church planting for the CRCNA for the next decade … and set this plan before the churches by the time of next year’s synod.” Having set the vision in motion, Classis Southeast US launched the conference to keep the momentum going.

Spoelstra recalled that Vander Ploeg was already talking about a next-step conference before Synod 2025 was even over. “When he talked about trying something like a conference as a catalyst for the conversations about putting this vision together, I was really intrigued about that, and when we chatted during break times, we seemed to connect on a lot of levels,” Spoelstra said. “Then, when the conference came up, he asked if I would consider being part of the team that was putting together communication to get the word out.”

Multiply, with the theme "Multiply Disciples, Leaders and Churches," hosted participants from 100 Christian Reformed congregations, representing 38 of the 49 classes, and featured workshops on specific disciple-making tools, stories of disciple-making and renewal across the denomination, sessions on gospel-centered identity, and a call to urgency and hope.

“I'm incredibly enthusiastic about the grassroots nature of this,” said Jonathan Spronk, an Iowa pastor who attended from Classis Central Plains. “This (mutual support of church planting) is happening through organic conversations, and I'm excited to see how we can develop these ties better.”

Two months before Multiply convened, the classis of Central Plains committed $55,000 in funding over three years for church planting in Classis Rocky Mountain, more than 900 miles away. Pastor Christian Sebastia, who was a presenter at the conference, has been working with networks of new Latino churches there, establishing “more than 35 congregations including four in Texas in the last seven years,” the conference program said. Several of them were affected by the loss of direct grants from Resonate announced earlier this year.

Eric Kamp, a co-pastor with Spronk at First CRC in Oskaloosa, Iowa, who serves on the Council of Delegates, said the effect of those losses prompted him to think about possible solutions. “It seemed to make sense that, at least for a transition period, we (Classis Central Plains) might support these churches” saying, “‘We can support you and your ministry there, but you guys have vision, you have energy, and you have a model that is showing success; can we learn from you in the process as well?’”

Central Plains decided at its September meeting to arrange for Sebastia to “help facilitate a similar vision/plan locally in our area, encourage local congregations to add some of these church plants/pastors to their regular offering schedule and perhaps create relationships with this budding ministry.”

Classis B.C. Northwest too, at its October meeting, received requests to “reprioritize church planting and church plant support.” They’re earlier in the process than Central Plains, but the classis agreed to form an ad hoc committee to work on a classis “vision, plan, and strategy for planting a specific number of churches over the next decade” and to “develop the details for a financial framework” including seed money from classis reserves, “special offerings, congregational donations, and mission-aligned partners.”

Three members of Classis B.C. Northwest attended Multiply. “The idea of bringing together leaders in the denomination was already something I had felt and wanted to see happen,” said Pastor Andrew Beunk. That, and the emphasis on discipleship, were two reasons Beunk was excited about attending. “A lot of what I was blessed by was some of the stories that were shared, but also meeting different people and networking, reconnecting with people and feeling in my conversations with a variety of people, that there's hope for the next chapter of ministry in the CRCNA.”

In Classis Quinte, Spoelstra’s classis, a grant will help launch a regional training network using Timothy Leadership Training, a model used for decades in more than 40 countries including Guyana, Cambodia, and Guatemala. Certified trainers Mark and Deborah Jallim from Living Hope Community Church in Whitby, Ont., are helping to prepare the first base-level trainers, including Spoelstra and other leaders from Discovery Church where he pastors in Bowmanville, Ont. After that training process is complete, they’ll start with training others in the spring.

All of these represent the kind of momentum that Vander Ploeg wants to see continue up to and after the renewed vision and strategy for church planting gets presented at Synod 2026.

“There has to be some concrete action steps that lead from the conference to some new day,” Vander Ploeg said in a pre-conference episode of his Disciple Standard podcast. “One is that we want to commit ourselves to raising up 2,000 leaders in the next decade. And another is that our church of 1,000 churches wants to commit itself to planting 1,000 congregations in the next decade. These are massive ideas, and we’re going to have to take massive, imperfect, gospel-sized action to accomplish these kinds of things.”

That starts, he posited, with every classis responding to the challenge, saying, “‘Hey, we think we can do 50 leaders in the next decade,’ and the next classis is going to say, ‘We think we can do 25,’ and then other classes may pick more and other classes may pick less, but then a real number, not just a round number like ‘2,000,’ will emerge that’ll become our pressing vision for the next decade together.”