Recommended Reading: Global Church Planting Report

Discipleship Ministries' Path 1 has recently released its Global Church Planting 2020 Report. The report includes data on church planting both in the United States and in the UMC central conferences, though the central conference data is incomplete due to limited reporting. While the data come from 2019, the report includes reflections on how the COVID-19 pandemic has impacted church planting in the last two years. The report also includes a list of definitions of various types of church plants in the United States, and the contextual nature of that list is acknowledged, which is nice to see. There is only so much a 12-page report can do, but by bringing together data from the United States, Africa, Europe, and the Philippines, by acknowledging the contextual nature of church planting strategies, and by identifying forces that cut across contexts (such as the pandemic), this report points towards an intercultural dialogue about the work of church planting that it would be helpful for the UMC to have.