What is Send Cleveland?

SEND Cleveland is a collaborative effort to plant churches in greater Cleveland. Every Cleveland Hope church can help see healthy new churches started. In partnership with Cleveland Hope, SEND Cleveland utilizes the best of Great Commission Baptist (GCB) resources from our State Convention, the Send Network of the North American Mission Board, and outside partner churches to give our potential planters and teams the most prepared, supported footing possible as they enter the harvest sharing Christ and forming congregations. Take a moment to meet our SEND Cleveland Team and learn about our “Calling Out the Called” culture! Scroll down to learn about the need, our vision, mission, guiding values, and strategy.

The Need:

University Circle

Sadly, many of Cleveland’s large, beautiful, historic church buildings sit empty, having abandoned historic orthodoxy and shuttered their doors.

SEND Cleveland seeks to reach people for Christ in a target area of nearly 2 million people. Despite a Great Commission Baptist presence in Greater Cleveland for many decades, church revitalization and church planting in urban and suburban contexts are desperately needed.

Cleveland Stats:

  • 45 Great Commission Baptist (GCB)churches across a region spanning Cuyahoga County (1.25 million people), Lake County (230,000 people), Lorain County (313,000 people), and the western half of Geauga County (94,000 people).

  • 1 GCB congregation for every 39,000 people in the region. Local GCB believers see that new evangelistic churches will be an essential part of a spiritual revival in Cleveland.

  • Cleveland (city) has a population of roughly 385,000 people.

  • Cleveland is a minority-majority city with just over 50% of the population identifying as black.

  • Only 8.5% of Metro Cleveland residents are evangelical.

  • Only 8 GCB churches are located within Cleveland’s city limits.

Vision:

The multiplication of life-giving churches in every community in NE Ohio through the development of healthy, multiplying church planters.

Mission:

Be a family of churches actively planting churches everywhere in NE Ohio for everyone in NE Ohio.

Dependence - devoting ourselves to prayer and the ministry of the Word

Kingdom - joining in God’s activity locally and globally

Transformation - pursuing gospel impact that holistically changes lives, families, and communities

Multiplication - trusting God for a disciple-making movement

Family - uniting for the accomplishment of the mission

Values:

Discover >> Develop >> deploy

Discover planters by building relationships with local churches and pastors so that they…

  1. develop a “gaining by losing” heart

  2. “call out the called” from within their own congregations, and

  3. build multiplication pipelines to equip planters and church planting team members

Develop planters by participating fully in Send Network’s Assessment, Residency, Training, Coaching, Care, and Spouse Care resources. A unique approach in Cleveland is a city-wide planter residency with three emphases:

  1. We rely on the local Sending Church to give planters a wide variety of ministry experiences and opportunities to grow in character, competence, and confidence

  2. We offer Send Network training led by seasoned pastors who have been trained to train planters. We train in 11 competencies:

    • Kingdom Focus

    • Kingdom Character

    • Missional Engagement

    • Missional Vision

    • Reproducible Sustainability

    • Team Building

    • Values

    • Disciple Making

    • Bold Faith

    • Systems and Structures, and

    • Effective Contextual Communication

  3. We expose planters to a variety of pastors in the Cleveland Hope association. These pastors teach planters in their areas of strength and expertise.

Deploy planters to reach people from the harvest for the harvest, working to help them develop missional engagement strategies that meet the needs of the people in their own communities.

Strategy: