As my wife and I prepare to begin planting next month, Multiply truly encouraged our hearts and increased our zeal to do the work ahead. We left better equipped in practical ways, and most of all we left better equipped with the hope of the gospel.

Before attending the Mutiply, I faced challenges that I had no experience with the church planting process and no big picture view. Multiply helped me strengthen faith, solve problems as a church planter, and get very practical help on specific issues. For example, what are the most important tasks to be concerned about and solved at the current stage I am in, and how to build a core team and to train a launch team. After this event, I revised my church planting proposal well, and communicated the vision and timeline more clearly to my team, which encouraged them a lot. Therefore, I strongly recommend Multiply to those who have a vision to plant churches in the US, especially Chinese church planters.

As a layman, in general, I did not understand the challenges that pastors were faced. We are trying to form a mission church. I did not know what the challenges would be. After hearing the real-life stories from the pastors at the conference/training, I have a better idea what it would look like.

I am part of a group of like-minded churches in Evangel Presbytery that has been meeting for some time to develop plans, both short-term and longer-term to add multiple new PCA/Reformed churches in the greater Birmingham, AL metro. We have so far been meeting to try to get an idea of where, what, and when. Ultimately, we would like to see multi-ethnic churches established, but do we aim for that first or later. Not being a "planter" myself, as no one else in our group is either, coming to the conference was seen as vital to our information gathering - and my time with you and the others didn't disappoint! Some of what was covered was "common sense" and understandable (strategic plans/budgets and the like). But, there was so much more in hearing from those who have actually planted or are in the process of getting better established. That interaction for me/us was invaluable and I took home a whole lot of takeaways. Thank you for that. As to one specific way, I'd have to say that we must bathe the process in prayer! We get so wrapped up in the demographics/type of leadership/members of our congregations helping in that leadership and on-and-on, but neglecting the One who makes it all come together. Would that be our main focus now. Again, thank you for allowing me to attend and I look so forward to seeing what He is going to do!

As one who is preparing to plant, the challenge I was facing was to begin developing a notion for what the early stages of church planting is like. I appreciated the experience brought by the facilitators to the trainings. And yet they displayed a reliance on the God's grace as they grew in their church planting efforts. I learned that my strategy and mission starts with me. I will have to model to my launch group that things that I want them to embody. Anyone considering church planting should attend Multiply. The learning and the fellowship are well worth the experience.

For anyone considering going, I say, "go!" Not just the content you receive, which is a great blend of inspirational and practical, but the intimate access to the facilitators and those across all stages of church planting is invaluable. Easily the best training event I've attended.