With a great deal of mixed feelings, I’d like to announce that I’ll be retiring at the end of this year as Canon for Church Planting. It’s been a great privilege for me to serve Bp John and all of you in this role. When I began five and a half years ago, the Great Commission Committee and I sensed God’s leading to cast the vision of becoming a church planting diocese. It’s a bold vision that needs all of us working together to fulfill it. We began by creating a church planting infrastructure with 7 essential systems: assessment, coaching, training, leadership pipeline, planter care, oversight, and funding.

Having these systems in place would greatly expand our capacity and enable us to move from planting a church every so often to planting multiple churches every year. Now that the Vision for 50 Fund has been established and is helping to fund our newest church plants, all seven system are up and running. We still have a lot of work to do, but my sense from the Lord was that my particular assignment had been completed.

As this ministry has grown, it became evident that the current part-time position was not sufficient for us to plant 50 churches by the end of the decade. Bp. John and the Great Commission Committee decided it was time to make this a full-time job. Working together with the Finance Committee, the budget was revised in such a way that would not impact the diocesan budget. A search committee has now been convened under the leadership of the Rev. Rick Wright and the position will be posted later this month. I wanted to share this news with you myself and ask your prayers for God to send us the person he has selected. Please join us in spreading the word and recommending this position to those you know who may be interested.

I also ask your prayers for me as I approach this milestone in my life and begin the process of leaving a job I have loved and about which I have been passionate for a very long time. I plan to continue my teaching at Gordon-Conwell, as well as my coaching and consulting after stepping down as your canon. I’m not sure how easy it will be for me to make this transition, but, as Paul said to the Philippians, “I am sure of this, that he who began a good work in you will bring it to completion at the day of Jesus Christ.”

The Rev. Dr. Tom Herrick is the Canon for Church Planting