At the board meetings for Multiply, we were able to spend a few hours talking about the state of missions and the work of Multiply within the United States Mennonite Brethren. A portion of this discussion was led by Aaron Box, who has been the USMB National Director for a little over a year. During this time, Aaron spoke about the goals for our denomination over the next few years, as determined by national leaders. I thought these goals were fascinating and helpful, and wanted to pass them along to you, with a few of my own thoughts.

USMB 3-5 Year Goals

• Sustain 5-10 new churches or campuses each year
• Develop a robust culture of personal disciple-making in our churches
• Produce 50 trained leaders per year
• Average each church sending 1 global worker every 5 years
• Rebuilt trust among our churches

The key words for the USMB national strategy are disciple, develop, deploy - and we will be hearing these words repeated from our denomination. I think they are good words, and they are reflected in these goals. These values and these 3-5 year goals also nicely align with our current church vision; "Training every discipleship to worship, follow, and share Christ." You'll notice the second goal above is to develop a robust culture of personal disciple-making. I've heard Aaron Box say that his dream is to be able to walk into any USMB church and be able to ask any congregant who they are discipling, and that they would have an answer to that question. It was encouraging to hear him say that, because that's the same thing I've dreamed of for our church! That alignment is encouraging. Also, you will notice a renewed emphasis on planting churches. We are not done with this task, and continue to pray toward this end! In fact, we'll be talking about that some at our elder retreat on Saturday, October 25th (pray for us). My last thought from these goals is one of encouragement, in that we have actually sent global workers recently in the Lewises. In sum, as I've reflected on these national goals, I'm enthused that we as a local church are in line with the heart of our national body. I'm also cognizant of our great room for growth. And I'm optimistic that God will be with us all as we seek to disciple, develop, and deploy God's people, for the sake of the gospel.