The Hub Model.

§ 01What a Hub Is.

A sending church sends some of its own people to start new churches and keeps standing behind them. A hub is a sending church that also trains: it forms pastors, elders and groups, sends some of them to plant, and keeps walking with the churches they plant until some of those churches can train and send as well.

A hub is a real church first, with its own members and elders, its own worship and its own care for one another. A trusted partner ministry can also do a hub’s work of training, as SLMIF does in Thailand when it trains pastors and ministry leaders to serve their own churches. In this model, the sending itself belongs to churches.

A hub doesn’t have to be large. A church of sixty that forms its people well and is willing to send them can be one, and so can a church of two thousand. What counts is faithful formation and a willingness to let people go.

§ 02How the Hub Works.

The model has five stages, and each one depends on the one before it.

Where the pattern comes from

Paul taught boldly in the synagogue at Ephesus for three months. Then he withdrew with the disciples and taught them every day in the hall of Tyrannus. This went on for two years, and the word of the Lord spread through the whole province of Asia, to Jews and Greeks alike.

Acts 19:8–10 (paraphrased)

Asia here means the Roman province around Ephesus. Many scholars think the churches in Colossae, Laodicea and Hierapolis began in those years, though Paul himself seems not to have visited Colossae or Laodicea (Colossians 2:1). Colossae learned the gospel from Epaphras, one of its own people, who also worked hard for the believers in Laodicea and Hierapolis (Colossians 1:7; 4:12–13). That is the picture behind a hub: people taught in one place, and churches taking root through them in many places.

Scripture gives the convictions: the gospel preached plainly, churches made up of believers, qualified elders who shepherd and teach, congregations that govern their own life under Christ, and churches that send. The hub model is a practical way of carrying those convictions into small towns and among the nations. Other faithful churches organize this work differently, and we’re glad they do.

§ 03Churches of Their Own.

The churches we hope to plant are small, sustainable and low in overhead. Small means a congregation where people can know one another by name. Sustainable means it can carry its own life over many years. Low overhead means modest costs: no large staff, and a meeting place it can afford, which for most will be a home at first. Each is led by trained elders, and each is its own church.

A congregation of thirty may never fund a full-time salary or a large building, and it can still be a true church: the Word faithfully preached, baptism and the Lord’s Supper kept, qualified elders, and members who care for one another. Small towns shouldn’t go without a healthy church because they can’t sustain a conventional staffing and property model.

Where they meet

Most of the churches we hope to plant will begin in a home: a few households around a table on the Lord’s Day, with the Word, prayer, song and a shared meal (Acts 2:42; 20:7; Colossians 3:16). Some will meet in a storefront, a shared church building or a rented room from the start, and others will move to one as they grow. Homes are never mandatory, and no family is ever required to host. The right place depends on the town: where people already gather, what older members and families with young children can reach, and what can be kept safe. Churches That Start Small explains how a church that begins in a home works.

Lower overhead must never mean weaker teaching, unsafe ministry or inadequate care. A living room or a rented room still needs faithful preaching, written practice for keeping children safe, a way to care for people in crisis, and a way for anyone who can’t manage stairs to take full part, even if that means meeting somewhere else. Church buildings have served many towns well for generations, and a congregation that has one has nothing to apologize for.

§ 04How One Church Is Planted.

These six steps zoom in on the hub’s middle stages: how one church is sent, planted and joined to the network. The hub trains and sends a church planter, who will usually keep another job, with a small planting team, often only a few households. The new church’s own elders are usually raised up from the town over time (step four). Each step has a gate, something that has to be honestly true before the next step begins. Some beginnings will move slowly, and some will stay Bible studies for a long time. Either can be faithful.

1. Begin in a healthy sending church

   The work starts in a real congregation that gathers for worship, preaching, prayer, baptism, the Lord’s Supper, discipleship and pastoral care, with its own members, qualified leaders and accountability. In Antioch of Syria, while the prophets and teachers were worshiping the Lord and fasting, the Holy Spirit told them to set apart Barnabas and Saul. After more fasting and prayer they laid hands on the two men and sent them off (Acts 13:1–3). The Spirit sent them (13:4), and the church released two of its own leaders.

   Before the next step: The sending church’s elders and congregation have agreed in prayer to send, and the church can keep caring for its own people while it does.

2. Listen to the town

   People from the sending church meet residents and the pastors already serving there. They learn the town’s work schedules, travel distances, winters, existing Christian witness and real needs. Listening may show that the wiser step is to revitalize a church that is already there, helping it recover its health, or to replant one, restarting a church that is closing with new leaders and members, often in its own building. That is a welcome answer.

   Before the next step: Residents and the pastors already serving the town have been heard, and any new or renewed church would serve alongside the faithful churches already there.

3. Gather a planting team and begin small

   A church planter goes with a planting team, often only a few households. Most gatherings begin in a home: a meal, the Scriptures, prayer and song each Lord’s Day, with neighbors invited in. A Bible study or town gathering may also begin around relationships, Scripture, prayer, hospitality and local service. The gospel of Christ’s death and resurrection is taught plainly, and people are invited to trust him. Each gathering has a named pastor from the sending church who is responsible for it, a leader its elders have approved to guide it, practical support and safe arrangements for children. A group doesn’t become a church just because it meets regularly or receives funding.

   Before the next step: A responsible pastor, an approved leader, safe arrangements for children set down in writing and, where the gathering meets in a home, a host household that has agreed freely are in place from the first meeting, and no one calls the gathering a church before it is one.

4. Train local shepherds

   Over time the sending church identifies men whose character and doctrine can be examined across ordinary life, in the town where they live and work. In the churches we hope to plant, we follow the Baptist convictions James Bell holds and teaches: the office of elder, also called pastor or overseer, is held by qualified men (1 Timothy 3:1–7; Titus 1:5–9), and we hold this with respect for Christians who read these passages differently. These men are trained in Scripture, doctrine, teaching, pastoral care, handling conflict, safeguarding (keeping children and vulnerable adults safe), financial integrity and training others, through mentoring and observed ministry. Completing a course never makes anyone an elder.

   Women and men across the church are trained too: to teach children, read the Bible with newer believers, open their homes, care for the sick and grieving, and share the gospel with their neighbors. The full approach is on the Training and Curriculum page.

   Before the next step: A man is recognized as an elder only after his character, doctrine and ministry have been tested over time and a church affirms him: the sending church until the new church is constituted, and the new congregation itself after that.

5. Constitute a church

   A gathering is constituted as a church, formally organized with its own members and leaders, when it is ready. Readiness includes covenant membership, sound doctrine, qualified leadership, worship and the ordinances, care and discipline, safe ministry, responsible governance and an honest budget. Attendance targets, donor deadlines and fixed timetables have no part in the decision. Scripture warns against making a recent convert an overseer (1 Timothy 3:6), and Barnabas and Saul spent a whole year teaching the church in Antioch (Acts 11:26).

   Membership rests on what Baptists call regenerate church membership. Regenerate means born again: the church receives as members people who profess faith in Christ, show the new life he gives, and have been baptized as believers. Covenant membership describes how those members commit themselves to one another.

   Before the next step: The marks of readiness listed above are present, and the new church has chosen its own name.

6. Join the network and send again

   The new church governs its own life under Christ. It may choose to join the network for training, care, accountability and shared mission. In time it may train and send others and become a hub itself. Some churches will send a family, some will mentor a nearby leader, and some will serve their own town faithfully for many years. All of these are faithful.

   Before the next step: When this church in its turn considers sending, it meets the first gate: its elders and congregation agree to send, it can keep caring for its own people, and any help it gives or receives is agreed openly and reported honestly.

This is a ministry pathway for one church. No step happens on a fixed schedule, and the work in a town may rightly pause at any step.

§ 05Shepherds Who Hold Another Job.

Most of these churches will be led, at least at first, by elders who also hold another job. A bivocational pastor works another job alongside his ministry, often because the church can’t yet pay a full salary. A covocational pastor holds another job by calling as much as by necessity: the work keeps him among his neighbors and leaves more of the church’s money free for mission. Both are honorable ways to serve. Paul made tents in Corinth while he preached there (Acts 18:1–4), and he also taught that those who preach the gospel should get their living by it (1 Corinthians 9:14).

In small rural churches this is already common. In a 2025 survey of about 1,000 rural Protestant pastors, about 40% of those leading churches with annual budgets under $50,000 described themselves as bivocational, against about 9% of all the rural pastors surveyed. Across the whole survey, about 53% agreed that they often feel their congregation looks to them to do most of the church’s work¹.

A shepherd who also works another job should be able to count on his church, and on the churches that stand with it, for:

• Reasonable responsibilities that fit the hours he actually has.
• Shared leadership, with more than one qualified elder wherever possible, so that preaching, care and decisions don’t rest on one man.
• Mentoring and coaching: regular conversations with an experienced pastor who helps him think, plan and keep going, tells him the truth and prays for him.
• Appropriate compensation when the church is able, even if it is modest.
• Rest, including a weekly day off and regular time away, protected by the church as well as by him.

His household must never become invisible, unpaid staff. If he is married, his wife and children belong to the church family as fully as anyone else. They are free to serve as others do, and no one should quietly count on their labor. Full-time pastoral support also remains a good option. Where a church can support a pastor fully and that serves the congregation well, it should feel free to do so.

§ 06A Network, Freely Joined.

We are seeking to build a network that churches planted from a hub may choose to join. It isn’t operating yet. It would exist to serve its churches, with no authority over them, and a church that joins would be free to leave.

What the network would give

• Training. Cohorts and coaching for pastors, elders and groups, using the same curriculum.
• Care. Someone who calls, visits and prays for each pastor and his household, and notices when a shepherd is worn out.
• Accountability. Help that churches ask for and agree to, in doctrine, money and safe ministry, with honest reporting both ways.
• Shared mission. Praying together, sending together and helping one another in need. When a famine was coming, the disciples in Antioch sent relief to the believers in Judea (Acts 11:27–30). A newer or smaller church can receive help and give it at the same time.

What it never takes

The network would never take a church’s right to govern its own life under Christ, which Baptists call the autonomy of the local church. Each church keeps its own name, elders, members, decisions, money and property, and ENDS doesn’t govern them either. Inside each church, the pattern we hope to follow is what many Baptists call elder-led congregationalism: qualified elders lead and teach, and the congregation, under Christ, recognizes its leaders and bears final responsibility for its own life.

This is an old Baptist conviction. In 1749 the Philadelphia Baptist Association, the first Baptist association in America, wrote that an association is “not a superior judicature,” a court set over its churches, and that independent churches join together by their “voluntary and free consent”².

The same essay allowed an association to withdraw fellowship from a church that departed from their shared doctrine. The network would work the same way: its churches could agree on standards for belonging, but the network would never govern a church. It would never take over the work or the fellowships our partners already lead.

§ 07Why This Model.

The hub model comes out of what James Bell has learned as a pastor.

Eleven years as a pastor in church revitalization have given me much to thank God for, and I have watched him do great things. These years have also shown me how much of what I have helped build rests on “come and see”: build the church, come to the programs, come and attend. The same few people have carried the teaching year after year. The believers we have formed are faithful, but we have rarely shown them how to make disciples themselves. Attendance is not the goal. The goal is disciples who make disciples, and churches that plant churches.James Bell

He writes about this more fully in his letter on The Mission page, along with the wider picture. By Lifeway Research’s estimate, more Protestant churches closed than opened in the United States in 2024³, and about three-quarters of Protestant senior pastors in a 2022 survey said it has become harder to find mature young Christians who want to be pastors⁴.

What the research shows

The figures below bear on the model itself. No national figure describes any one town, and each carries its limits in the notes at the end of this page.

None of these figures proves that a model works. Read together, they shaped four choices in this one:

• Raise leaders from the town itself. With younger pastors scarce, a town can’t depend on leaders arriving from somewhere else. A hub sends a planter and a small planting team, and from the start it trains people who already live there, so the new church’s elders can come from its own town.
• Plan for small. Most congregations are already small, much of what they spend goes to staff and buildings, and many pastors already hold another job. The churches we hope to plant keep costs modest and expect that most of their elders will work other jobs, so a small town can carry one.
• Plant new churches, and help existing ones. Among Southern Baptist churches in 2023, newer ones baptized more people for their size, and some older churches need help to recover. The model makes room for planting, revitalizing and replanting.
• Build in training and peers from the start. In one study of funded plants from the early 2000s, plants whose planters trained members to lead, and planters who met monthly with peers, were more likely to still be open about four years on. The network we hope to build is meant to offer both.

The same study found no clear survival link for a sponsoring church, mentoring or assessment. The model keeps all three for other reasons: Scripture gives churches the work of testing and sending their leaders (Acts 13:1–3; 1 Timothy 3:10; 5:22), Timothy was formed by serving alongside Paul (Philippians 2:22), and survival is not the only measure of a faithful church.

What Thailand taught us

James Bell serves on the advisory board of SLMIF, the Servant Leadership Ministry Foundation in Chiang Mai, and teaches in its Servant Leadership Academy. SLMIF’s Frontline Mission works with local field networks to find leaders already serving in frontier regions, train them and release them to reach their own people, and it keeps resourcing them where they are. SLMIF sums it up in three words: “Find. Train. Release.” It also puts it in one line: “We don’t recruit them to leave; we resource them to stay.” Its Academy now also lists a USA–Canada cohort for 2026–27⁹.

That pattern belongs to no single country. Find the people God has already placed in a community, train them there, send them to serve their own people, and keep standing with them. It is what we are seeking to do here as well.

§ 08What We Hope to Do Here.

The work we have done among the nations is the work we are now seeking to do here, the way a missionary can be sent both abroad and at home. We hope to plant a church in rural America that grows into a hub. It would be a real church first, sent from a sending church and accountable to it. In time, we hope it will train pastors, elders and groups, send planting teams to nearby towns, and keep walking with the churches they plant, each of them a church of its own.

Rural America is many places. About one in five Americans, roughly 66 million people, lived in areas the Census Bureau classed as rural in 2020¹⁰. Many of those towns have faithful churches that have served for generations. Some have watched a church close, or a pastor serve alone for years. An underserved American town is also different from an unreached people group, and we won’t treat the two as the same. So the work begins with listening to the people who live there and to the pastors already serving them.

We’re praying for the people God may already have placed in those towns: pastors carrying the work alone, church members ready to be trained, and families willing to be sent. When Peter was in prison, the church prayed earnestly for him (Acts 12:5), and the word of God went on increasing and multiplying (12:24). This work depends on the same kind of prayer.

§ 09Common Questions.

More questions are answered on the FAQ page.

§ 10The Whole Work.

Seven things explain the work. The strategy, the churches and the network are on this page; the mission, the curriculum, the training and the global work have pages of their own.

§ 11Your Next Step.

Every next step begins with a conversation, and James Bell is the contact for this work. Choose a topic on the contact page, or write to info@endsinitiative.org with the topic in the subject line.