State of the Microchurch Movement in the West

Where Does the Microchurch Movement in the West Find Itself?

In 2022, Leadership Network (LN) convened a Learning Community of leading microchurch practitioners and network leaders. The goal of this community was to catalyze and collate the biblical, missiological, and cultural learnings of the microchurch movement in America in order to help current and future microchurch leaders in the West. The LN Microchurch Next team worked with Catapult to help design and facilitate these events, as well as harvest, synthesize, and disseminate the findings.

The Mircochurch Learning Community, with representatives from 14 different microchurch networks across the United States, gathered three times to explore the following three questions:

• What is the overarching narrative of the microchurch movement in the West? Where are we now? What is the next chapter?
• What are the current shared barriers/pain points that these microchurch movements are experiencing?
• Where do we see the Spirit birthing solutions to these challenges? How do we apply and scale these solutions?

This State of the Microchurch resource is a collation of our learnings around the first two questions: (1) How did we get here? (2) What are the barriers we are currently facing?

Part 1 illustrates the answer to the first question using a metanarrative map that charts the major forces, events, thought leadership, and movements that shaped the microchurch movement over the last few decades. Part 2 addresses each barrier microchurch network practitioners are currently facing.

In this moment, microchurch networks are concurrently emerging in hundreds of cities. We hope that this report informs and inspires all who are joining Jesus in the resurgence of this form of the church in our time.

This April, two of the networks that were in this community of practitioners, KC Underground and the Church Project, will be hosting the Microchurch Next Learning Community for practitioners who are ready to be trained, coached, and supported in their Microchurch journey. Registration is open now; for more information and registration visit: https://leadnet.org/microchurch-next-learning-communities/ .

DOWNLOAD State of Microchurch: Shared Learning from Some of America’s Most Seasoned Microchurch Practitioners

Created from Leadership Network’s Microchurch Learning Community with content by Doug Paul from Catapult