Morgan Hill Bilingual Group
New Church Plantings Create More Opportunities to Spread God’s Message
T
“
he purpose of the church planting department of the Central California Conference is to establish new congregations where there is no Adventist presence,” explained Ricardo Viloria, director of the ministerial and church planting departments. But there is a process that must be followed to achieve this goal. It starts with establishing new groups throughout the territory. Over time, these groups grow into companies. With work, worship, and love, these companies continue to blossom until they ultimately organize as a church. These churches are designed to continue to grow so the cycle can repeat. As more groups, companies, and churches are created, more opportunities to reach people arise. “In a survey sent to our pastors, we found that we currently have 75 groups in our conference. Our goal was to double that number by the end of 2022, then double that amount in 2023 and so on to reach 1,200 groups by 2025,” Viloria said. There are currently 150 churches in the Central California Conference. Using the church planting process, the dream is to add 50 new churches by 2025. The goal is for these churches to thrive at a level that naturally results
20 Pacific Union Recorder
Central California Conference
in more churches. The CCC church planting department provides pastors and leaders with motivation, training, and resources. “These groups, companies, and churches will meet well-prepared leaders, thus providing a tremendous opportunity to mobilize and activate them to the mission,” Viloria explained. There are plans to create a digital training center that will help in this process. The training center will be used to train pastors and leaders and provide them with all of the information they need to succeed in creating healthy congregations. “This process has already begun in our conference. We currently have 10 new active church planting projects that are being developed, the newest of them being the Morgan Hill church plant,” said Viloria. Morgan Hill Bilingual Group According to Gilbert Garcia, senior pastor for the Gilroy Hills Bilingual and Salinas Spanish churches, the Morgan Hill church plant has been an idea for several years. But because of the coronavirus, the timing just wasn’t right.