In 2025, Obra Hispana launched an ambitious initiative: 25:5, a call to plant 25 churches in 5 years. This bold vision reflects a Spirit-led commitment to multiplication, equipping new leaders, and birthing innovative communities of faith that respond to urgent needs across the diverse cultural contexts of Hispanic/Latino ministries. We are grateful that Disciples Church Extension Fund’s New Church Ministry has embraced this vision and joined in full partnership to support it.
The initiative is rooted in biblical principles of discipleship and multiplication. Jesus’ method was multiplication, making disciples who make disciples, planting churches, and raising leaders who raise leaders. Guided by Matthew 28 and Ephesians 4, this effort is not about preserving tradition, but about cultivating a Spirit-led movement that reflects the Kin-dom of God across generations, cultures, and regions. The future of the Church is diverse and multicultural, and the Hispanic church is already positioned to lead this shift, having lived multicultural realities for decades within the Spanish-speaking church in the United States.
Why now? New places of worship are urgently needed. Our communities are growing, yet traditional models often fall short of reaching those hungry for belonging and transformation. A 2023 Barna study revealed that 73% of Gen Z want to change the world, and 61% want to be part of a community that fights for justice. Yet only 29% believe the church is that place. This initiative seeks to directly close that gap.
The work is underway. The next step is a Spanish-speaking, culturally relevant Church Planting Academy, held from September 24–27, 2025, in Kansas City, MO. Thirty-two planters will gather for discernment, capacity building, and innovative learning. Together, they will envision new and traditional church models: neighborhood-rooted congregations, house churches, bilingual/multilingual expressions, digital communities, and justice-driven missional collectives.
This is the right time. God is calling us not to preservation but to multiplication, to the planting of churches that will carry the gospel with power, relevance, and prophetic witness into the next generation and beyond.
An excerpt of this blog post also appeared in the September 2025 issue of our ministry’s newsletter, the New Church Know-It-All.
“Churches don’t represent youth without a faith background.”
As a pastor dedicated to reaching young people, Rev. Dr. Tiffany DeTienne does not mince her words when it comes to serving young adults.
“Young people are looking for something familiar,” she explains. “For many of them who do have a background in the church, youth group was often the best community of their life.”
With The Fringe, a new place of worship in Lawrence, KS, Rev. Dr. Tiffany is hoping to provide an on ramp to church for those who have no faith community.
On June 1 and 8, Disciples across the United States and Canada can support emerging and affiliating faith communities that are going beyond what’s been done before – ones just like The Fringe – by participating in the Pentecost Offering.
In the early 2010s, Rev. Dr. Tiffany was working at a robust congregation, one that boasted more than 300 attendees. Its youth ministry was just as vibrant – it saw 100 unique students a month, with 60 attending every week. While some of them came from church families, most were local students.
Even after she left her job, former students who were looking for pastoral care – whether that came in the form of a listening ear or a driver with a big car – would still reach out to her.
“A lot of our students needed someone to help move them in and out of their apartment for college,” Rev. Dr. Tiffany recalls. “And so I would connect with my old youth sponsors, and rally that support for those students.”
More than a decade later, these students became young adults – navigating college, housing insecurity, and their sexual orientations – still in search of community.
At the same time, Rev. Dr. Tiffany was also finding her place in the world and how to best use her skills to serve people who had a desire to explore their faith for the first time. She had worked as a minister in established congregations – experiences marked by what she called the “shuffling of the sheep,” or the departure of congregants from one traditional church to another. What she wanted now in her life was to convey the Good News in a language and a medium that a new generation could hear and understand.
Rev. Dr. Tiffany speaks to those gathered at Leadership Academy 2023
“I’ve just always felt called to come back and finish the work I did with young adults, of creating a space that is welcoming and approachable,” she shares. “A space for people who don’t come from a religious background or who don’t feel like they’re represented at church.”
So Rev. Dr. Tiffany attended New Church Ministry’s Leadership Academy – an event that empowers pastors, core teams, students, and others on their journey to become movement initiators – not once, but three times. When she enrolled in the Discerners’ Track, which is designed for participants who are discerning what path God is taking them down, she did so with the intention of learning what it would take to launch a church. What she received was not only a road map for that process, but a sense of comradery with her peers.
“It was really good to be with people who shared such an outrageous dream,” she remembers. “When you have that passion and order your life around it, it can be lonely. It was so great to meet other people who were in the same boat as me.”
Finally, in Easter of last year, Rev. Dr. Tiffany launched The Fringe, so named to reflect Jesus’s ministry of serving people on the fringes of society. Its members meet every Tuesday – to accommodate the busy lives of its young adults – at a local open and affirming church. For three weeks out of the month, they gather in small groups, where Rev. Dr. Tiffany strives to take an invitational approach that is responsive to the “Rise of the Nones,” or the increasing number of religiously unaffiliated people in the United States.
Full worship gatherings use music you might hear on the radio, instead of traditional contemporary Christian songs.
“We call our sermons Text Talks, which is a play on words of TED Talks,” she says. “We always have someone tell a story after the talk that has to do with the theme of the week’s biblical text. That’s been a great way for people to get to know one another, to share their stories, to not feel alone.”
Rev. Dr. Tiffany and others will then break out into exploratory stations to engage in embodied actions or artistic expressions that corollate with the text. Prayer and communion stations are also made available.
“When communion was the only thing happening during worship, many folks at The Fringe felt it was very exclusive to our core team. That’s why we shifted to our exploratory break-out sessions,” she clarifies. “For these individuals, communion was awkward because they didn’t feel comfortable coming to the Table yet. And so that was a big discovery for me, as someone who was raised as a pastor’s kid.”
The first week of the month is reserved for “Taco ‘Bout It” Tuesdays, where people are invited to a taco place downtown. It’s an opportunity for The Fringe to create spaces for conversation that are a little freer flowing than in its small group settings.
This past year, Rev. Dr. Tiffany has also been regularly seeing Rev. Steven Smith – a New Church Ministry coach – who has provided an additional support system for her.
“You don’t run into a lot of new church folks in the denomination, so you end up not knowing a whole lot of people who share your experiences. It’s the opposite when you’re a traditional minister,” Rev. Dr. Tiffany says. “So, Rev. Steven has been a great bellwether for me and gives thoughtful advice.”
Due to its small size and lack of resources, The Fringe is currently on the lookout for ways to partner with local organizations to serve the community.
As Rev. Dr. Tiffany looks to the future, she encourages all churches – big and small, new and established – to ask themselves what it would feel like to walk into a church for the first time, and then use whatever answers come up to help expand the way that their church does ministry.
“We are in a time where people need hope, and I would love for us to get back to that in a broader way,” she concludes. “We have something of value to offer the communities that we live in.”
When you make a gift to the Pentecost Offering, half of your gift stays in the region in which it is received to support the local new church movement. The other half goes to New Church Ministry, which trains, equips, assists, and multiplies emerging and affiliating congregations and their leaders. Please give generously to this Special Day Offering.
Depending on whom you ask, the month of October is important to different people for different reasons. If you are fighting cancer, you may know that October is Breast Cancer Awareness Month. If you have battled depression, you may know that October is Depression Awareness Month. If you are an abuse survivor, you may know that October is Domestic Violence Awareness Month in the United States.
Did you know that there is a special group of people who find October important for all these reasons? This group is clergy. Not only have they walked alongside the members of their faith communities as they struggled to escape abusive situations, endured cancer, and battled depression, but clergy themselves have experienced abuse, struggled through cancer, and fought depression. They accomplish the extraordinary feat of attending to the hurts, pains, and distresses of others at the very same time they deal with their own. In his book, The Wounded Healer, author Henri Nouwen asserts that there needs to be a “deeper understanding of the ways in which ministers can make their own wounds available as a source of healing.” (pg. 4) As a result of their ability to care for others amid their own struggles as a reflection of Christ, clergy are known as wounded healers.
In addition to the reasons listed above, this month is also important because it gives us an opportunity to appreciate these wounded healers. October is Clergy Appreciation Month. We might say that the first concept of Clergy Appreciation Month was suggested by the Apostle Paul in A.D. 62 – 64. In 1 Tim. 5:17, he wrote “Let the elders who rule well be counted worthy of double honor, especially those who labor in the word and doctrine.” (MEV)
As you go through the month of October, take time to honor a clergyperson for their service to God and to others despite their own personal struggles. Send a thank-you card, take them to dinner, or buy a bouquet of flowers. Let them know that you care and that they are appreciated.
A little over three years ago, I was invited to participate in the New Church Ministry’s coaching program as part of our Movement’s covenant with the Pacific Southwest Region of the Christian Church (Disciples of Christ). I accepted this invitation and opportunity. However, I did so with a healthy amount of skepticism, hesitancy and even a little trepidation as to the time requirement involved, and what value it would provide. Rev. Steven Smith was assigned as my coach, and he has supported and journeyed with me for over 3 years. Here are some takeaways:
Rebecca Anderson grew up Evangelical, but as a young adult, she didn’t consider herself a religious person.
That didn’t mean she didn’t dip her toes in the waters of different communities of faith.
And then she attended a local church in Boston at the suggestion of a fellow non-religious friend, which changed her life. In fact, she describes the experience as her day of Pentecost.
