Welcome to the Resonate Collective
Written by Craig Lovelace
Since 2007 Resonate Church has been rooted in a belief that God wanted to do something with the next generation but it would require us to think bigger – to think differently.
By planting churches for students on campus we had to break through barriers and find creative funding streams and defy the limits most people thought would hold us back. We had to figure out how to develop young people who otherwise might not “qualify” to lead in the church.
As we multiplied and planted more churches, we had to figure out how to create a network that fostered collaboration and supported young teams.
When we had just a handful of churches, that looked like gathering monthly with our entire staff to collaborate and learn from one another about how best to reach the college campus.
At the time this made sense. None of us were more than a four-hour drive from our home base in Pullman, Washington and there were less than 30 of us on staff.
As we planted more churches at faraway universities, gathering together often was a challenge. We shifted to quarterly gatherings and now we gather just a couple times a year and prioritize specific roles gathering to have specific conversations.
We’ve had to learn how to centralize, decentralize, and recentralize. We’ve learned how to appropriately distribute authority and responsibility. We’ve learned to trust one another to play various parts to make sure that our staff teams are well-led and the lost freshman remains a priority.
God has been gracious to us through the ups and downs (there have been plenty) of church planting and we’ve learned so many valuable lessons (some the hard way).
Over and over, we’ve had to break through barriers and rethink what’s possible in order to be focused on our core mission to tell the next generation about the love of Jesus and send them with purpose into a broken and hurting world.
As our network has grown it’s forced us to find different ways to organize. We like to think of these as different phases.
You could think of it like this…
Phase 1 |
Single Church
Phase 2 |
Multisite Church, one church in multiple locations. Centralized team and leadership.
Phase 3 |
Multi-church Network, Churches operating with distinct ecclesiology but a shared central support organization and collaborative strategy and leadership.
Phase 4 |
Collective; a collaborative network of churches with shared mission and values but distinct strategy and leadership – all supported by a central support organization that provides support through administration, care, coaching, and connection.
We want to empower and release our people to do what God has called them to do while remaining connected to our Resonate values, culture, and shared mission.
This shift to evolve the Resonate Church Network into the Resonate Collective is the next step in our story.
Here’s a breakdown of the major shifts we’re making as we evolve from the Resonate Church Network to the Resonate Collective.
From “Resonate Church” to “Resonate Collective”
This shift clarifies the difference between the local church and the organization we’ve created to serve and empower the local church.
As we’ve evolved from one church to multiple churches to a Collective, we want to be clear about what makes up the local church and what we’re building to support the local church.
We want to fight for clear and robust ecclesiology and make sure that local churches have a plurality of qualified elders to seek God’s will and lead the church. Our Resonate Collegiate churches will also be unified around a Collegiate Board of Elders who have been elected by the pastors of our collegiate churches. This board, along with a dedicated Collegiate staff team will help ensure that our collegiate churches start and stay strong.
Our collegiate churches will still bear the name Resonate Church followed by their city.
Empowering Broadly
This shift allows us to “broaden the tent” and partner with more kinds of churches, empowering more kinds of visions to reach new places Our history has been focused on planting collegiate churches and reaching students. As many of our staff and committed disciples mature and grow, they want to stay part of the family but need leadership, strategy, and communities focused on reaching the families and young professionals that they bump into in their post-college lives.
What does it mean to “broaden the tent?” Picture a big wedding in one of those big white event tents. You know, like the one in the British Bake Show.
At the wedding, you have many different tables and at each table, you see a different side of the family. They might come from different places, they might do life in their own way, they definitely have different inside jokes and stories and they may even speak different languages. But, at the end of the day, they’re all there for the same purpose.
Throughout the event, they’re going to move from table to table and share stories and swap ideas. They’re going to encourage one another and then at the end of the day they’re going to go back to their world and their way of life. But, they are now all connected by that shared event and that new marriage.
In the same way, the Collective creates a space for churches to gather, collaborate, share missional purposes, and bless one another. Even if they are from different places, do church differently, reach a different missional focus, and have different strategies.
We see a future where community churches, international churches, collegiate churches, and even micro church networks can gather under one tent and share values, vision, and shared mission to reach the next generation, multiply disciples, and plant churches to reach the most lost parts of North America and beyond.
One other thing about empowering broadly. We believe that God has taught us some valuable lessons that most of the North American church hasn’t had to learn yet but will become more needed over the next decade. Whether churches want to formally join the Resonate Collective or not, we want to do a better job of packaging those lessons into resources that can bless the broader Kingdom of God.
God has been so generous to us and we want to share that blessing with others.
Doubling Down on the Campus
This shift is about keeping the main thing the main thing. We’ve always believed that the college campus is the most strategic mission field on planet Earth. We’re reaching the future leaders and influencers of the world and they are naturally being sent all over the globe. We get to disciple them to follow Jesus and take the message of salvation wherever they go when they graduate.
But, as our staff age and we seek to plant community churches to empower disciples who are out of college, we have to be careful that we don’t drift from our focus on the lost freshmen.
We’ve realized that the campus is the engine of our movement but not the end. It’s the engine that develops leaders and future church planters but then they are sent out and only a small percentage end up planting another collegiate church.
Another way to think about this is by looking at a phrase we’ve always used to remind us why the campus matters so much: “Win the freshman, win the world.”
Over the years, we’ve learned that this is just act one of the story.
Act two is to “send the senior.” We’ve seen great success developing and sending church plant teams but that’s such a small percentage of all the students who come through Resonate Churches.
Sending the seniors means knowing how to help them transition out of college and continue to be fruitful disciples in post-college life.
Historically, this hasn’t been a strength of collegiate churches and ministries. We aim to improve. The campus is the engine, but not the end.
We can’t wait to see how God continues to use his church to bring transformation to individuals, families, and cities as our students graduate, transition to community churches within our Collective, and discover what God has for them next.
So what does this post-college vision have to do with doubling down on the campus?
Doubling down on the campus means that we’re taking steps to clarify and strengthen the alignment we have around our collegiate strategy.
Making space for other kinds of churches to play in the Resonate Collective gives us the freedom to unapologetically say “This is what collegiate churches do and this is how they operate. If you want to do something different or reach post-college people, there’s now a path for that.”
One of the shadow sides of rapid multiplication is the tendency to fragment and diversify in unhelpful ways. Think about the childhood game of “telephone.” If you have any experience in Christian youth groups you know this game. The same effect happens when you plant multiple generations of churches and send leaders rapidly.
When we first began this church planting journey we radically underestimated the amount of training and documentation it would take to keep our strategy from diluting with each iteration. This isn’t done intentionally or maliciously – it just happens.
Our Resonate Church pastors have all committed to clarifying what we do with collegiate church planting to ensure that we never lose sight of our first priority – the lost freshman.
This means that our Resonate Collegiate Churches will have much more alignment, more frequent collaboration, and connect with one another differently than other non-collegiate churches in the Resonate Collective. If you can picture the wedding tent. Everybody will know where the collegiate tables are and they will do things their own way. You know they’re gonna be the first ones on the dance floor. Meanwhile, your community churches are gonna have a whole different part of the tent and it will be full of kids – so many kids.
So what does the Collective do?
Alright, are you still with us? If you’re still with us, we want to wrap up this article by explaining the various teams that comprise the Resonate Collective. We won’t share too much detail. To learn more about specific roles people play, check out our Team page here.
The Resonate Collective will be led by our Executive team who will report to a board of directors. We hope to have this board established by the end of 2024.
Under the executive team are the Collegiate Leadership Team (CLT), the Amplify Team, and the Next Team.
The CLT is tasked with clarifying collegiate strategy, equipping collegiate church staff, and facilitating strong collaboration between collegiate churches. This team is led by our Collegiate Director, Brian Jones.
Resonate Collegiate Churches will form a closely connected network that exists under the broader umbrella (or tent) of the Resonate Collective.
As we mentioned earlier, our Collegiate churches will operate with a higher degree of collaboration with one another than they likely will with non-collegiate churches.
We imagine the same will be true of other groups of churches with similar models in the future.
The Amplify Team is focused on providing central business and administrative services that every church needs to operate as a non-profit entity. We aim to offload the administrative weight that can so often keep church staff stuck behind their computers instead of doing the ministry work they most feel called to. This team will also provide creative and media resources to churches that help them tell their story and connect with people through digital media.
This team will be led by Craig Lovelace
Finally, the NEXT team will be led by Keith Wieser and will focus on mobilization. That means they will develop systems, resources, and training to help identify, train, and deploy church teams – including global church planting overseas. NEXT will also create resources that help churches create strong leadership and multiplication cultures.
We hope this article is a helpful resource to guide our Resonate Churches to a better understanding of where we’re going next as a Collective. We have so much optimism about the future of the church.
One of the greatest benefits of doing church on campus is a front-row seat to the next generation. And while this generation is facing significant challenges they also have unlimited potential.
There is still so much to learn about how best to serve the broader Kingdom of God. But we’re excited to learn.
That’s always been a part of our story; charging into the unknown believing that God’s got it all rigged and we’ll be better off trying the hard thing than playing it safe. Like the parable of the talents, we want to be the servant who invests his master’s money well, even if there’s a risk that it may not work out.
God is doing something big and we want to be obedient to say “yes” to him and allow him to show us dreams and possibilities that are far beyond what we can do on our own.
The Resonate Collective is all about inviting others with a similar vision to link arms with us to see what we can accomplish together.
If you have questions about the Resonate Collective or you’d like to learn more about what partnering with us could look like book a call with the button below and we’ll be in touch.
