SendNC recently hosted its first Hispanic Sending Lab and International Sending Lab, equipping more than 100 pastors and church leaders from diverse ethnic backgrounds to embrace their role in church planting. These gatherings reflect a growing vision to raise up disciple-making leaders in North Carolina who can reach the nations.

SendNC held its first-ever Sending Church Lab Español on May 10 in Winston-Salem, N.C. More than 35 Hispanic pastors and leaders representing 20 churches participated in the training.

William Ortega, SendNC’s Hispanic church-planting strategist, said it was an “inspiring time of learning and strategic conversation around what it means to be a sending church, not just receiving or growing, but actively raising up and sending out new church planters into harvest, both in North Carolina and beyond.”

For many Hispanic pastors, the workshop was the first time they learned about becoming sending churches. 

“It was eye-opening and empowering to realize that God can use their congregations, no matter the size, to raise up and send out the next generation of leaders,” Ortega said.

SendNC also held its first International Sending Church Lab on March 22 — only the second sending lab specifically for international church planters to take place in North America. Seventy planters and pastors participated, whose ethnic backgrounds have roots in Egypt, Ethiopia, Congo, Pakistan, Brazil, the Philippines, Bhutan, China, Myanmar, South Korea, India, Haiti and Vietnam.

“We are amazed that God continues to send the nations to North Carolina. The privilege to raise up disciple-making church planters to reach others from their homeland that find themselves in N.C. is wonderful,” said Mike Pittman, SendNC director. “The thought that these planters could send planters and the gospel back to their homeland from their churches is incredible.”

SendNC is a collaborative church-planting partnership between North Carolina Baptists and the North American Mission Board’s Send Network. The partnership maximizes support for N.C. Baptist church planters through coaching, care, training, first-year benefits and increased funding.

The one-day international workshop took place at Piedmont Baptist Association in Greensboro. It’s designed for churches interested in growing a sending culture and offers a collaborative environment for participants to identify their current level of church-planting involvement, articulate a vision for leading their church to plant churches, and then build a pathway to discover, develop and send out a church planter. The workshops also provide opportunities for pastors and planters to connect with each other.

“Jesus said, ‘As the Father has sent me, I am sending you.’ Christianity is a sending movement,” said Ralph Garay, international church-planting strategist. “Sending Lab is training churches how to live out who they are in Christ.”

Sending Lab equips churches to plant churches, just as Barnabas and Saul were sent out in Acts 13.

“The Spirit called, and the church sent,” Garay said. “Churches aren’t planted by individuals, networks or denominations: Churches plant churches. … Sending Lab reminds churches that the planters of tomorrow are sitting in their church today.”

The next Hispanic Sending Lab will take place on Aug. 23 in Raleigh, for churches in the eastern part of the state. Stay tuned for more information at sendnc.org.