The Praetorian Project: What We Do

The Praetorian Project: What We Do

By: Brian O’Day

What do you guys do anyway?
Why do you guys work together as churches?
Do you guys do __?
I get these types of questions all the time. They are great questions. The reality is
that we do a lot of things as a family of churches, however, we always want to keep to
things at the forefront of our minds.

1. We do long-term discipleship of highly transient people. I trust you have a
   concept of long-term discipleship: someone becomes a Christian, they begin to grow in
   the Lord, then they start to serve others. Eventually, they become leaders in the church,
   and maybe they are even commissioned by the church as a pastor, church planter, or
   missionary.
   The process described above typically takes many years. In fact, the Bible would
   encourage us to take time before putting someone in leadership, specifically pastoral
   leadership. (1 Tim. 3:6). The problem in military communities is that we don’t have many
   years with people. In our churches, we often have a member for an average of 3 years.
   But we still think these highly transient members should have the opportunity to
   be engaged in long-term discipleship in Jesus’ chosen entity for such discipleship, the
   local church.
   Therefore, we must work together. We must have churches that we’re connected
   to that are sending us people that we send people to that are along this discipleship
   path. As we work together, we can do long-term discipleship of highly transient people.
2. We advance the Gospel by multiplying churches. We have strong, biblical
   convictions that every church should be advancing the Gospel by multiplying churches.
   And we know that we have a boundless opportunity to see that happen in and through
   our churches.
   Many of the men in our churches are active-duty military. Active-duty military
   men are young–the vast majority are between the ages of 19-29 years. Further, when they
   leave active-duty service, they will still be young and desiring a second career. We
   believe (and have been seeing) that God will call many of these men to use their
   second careers to advance the Gospel by planting churches.
   We believe that God is going to raise up an army of church planters (pun
   intended) in our midst. Our job is to be faithful to disciple these men and their families
   preparing them for this important task!

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