Partnering with Nashville Presbytery to Advance the Gospel

The Nashville Presbytery’s desire to plant churches has been growing for a while, and this year, that momentum began to be channeled intentionally through a partnership with the Tennessee Valley Presbytery.

Nashville is TVP’s neighboring presbytery to the west, and over the last three years, Travis Vaughn’s work (as TVP’s executive director of church planting) naturally brought him into conversations with several different Nashville leaders. They talked about church planting, the value of church planting networks, and Nashville’s desire to plant.

In Nashville’s last couple of decades, Midtown Fellowship expanded to multiple campuses, and Crossroads of the Nations was planted and particularized, but the presbytery saw a need for a network-style approach to further planting efforts. The presbytery doesn’t have a central unified network, but TVP does, so we’re delighted to be able to share our resources through our church planting network.

Church planting happens often enough without a network. As Travis said, “Networks don’t plant churches, but churches and sessions and presbyteries plant churches.” However, Nashville (like TVP) hoped to build a unified approach that provides stability and strategy.

TVP’s connection with Nashville goes beyond our shared border; the two presbyteries used to be one. In 1994, the TVP split into two, forming what we know today as TVP and the Nashville Presbytery. “It’s fun bringing the two presbyteries back together around a shared mission,” says Travis.

Although a key part of this partnership is for Nashville to access the resources and established practices of the TVP Church Planting Network, it also benefits TVP. “It opens our church planter pipeline a bit,” says Travis, “with more people being in the mix and us becoming more aware of people looking at church planting in this part of the world.”

It’s also a chance for TVP to learn from fresh perspectives. “We wanted to have more voices in the room, people we don’t see everyday, don’t connect with every day. Are there things we can learn from them?”

The memorandum of understanding between both parties went into effect at the start of this summer. The MOU outlines specific ways TVP will partner with Nashville, such as fundraising work, coaching, and joint gatherings/retreats.

Of fundraising, Travis says, “We, through Matthew Bryant, are helping Nashville raise funds to build resources for a movement in the Nashville Presbytery.”

Travis also meets monthly with Nashville’s Mission to North America (MNA) chair, Eric Ashley, to provide coaching on church planting and network dynamics.

Both presbyteries will meet up for an annual church planting retreat, and Nashville will be invited to one or two of TVP’s quarterly church planting network gatherings each year (as well as Rural Church Development’s annual Small Town Pastor’s Retreat).

The first joint quarterly gathering was on August 27 in Chattanooga, TN, (closer for Nashville folks than our usual spot in Cleveland, TN). Hutch Garmany (TVP’s MNA chair) and Eric both spoke about the partnership and work going on in each presbytery.

For Eric, a highlight of this gathering was seeing the Spirit of the Lord at work. “Only the Lord causes waves, but we can ride them, and that’s what this feels like,” he said, “like He’s gone ahead of us to prepare for mutually beneficial collaboration and encouragement to fuel a movement of church multiplication.”

Hutch added, “It was like this partnership that’d been in the works for a while became tangible as all these leaders that we’ll be working with gathered together.”

Travis, Eric, Hutch, and other leaders in both presbyteries have already been encouraged by this partnership over a shared mission. Travis says, “We are hopeful that a regional network could come out of this,” meaning that multiple presbyteries could cooperate—not taking ownership away from individual presbyteries, but rather bringing resources together.

The MOU reads, “Each presbytery’s MNA committee will take responsibility to accomplish their own presbytery’s geographic-specific objectives and goals, but each will be willing to cooperate and collaborate, where possible, with the other.”

In Travis’ words, “It’s not two presbyteries becoming one. Rather, it’s the exploration of how we might cooperate with one another to plant churches throughout each of our presbyteries.”