Common Questions

It is ultimately the role of the elders to prayerfully seek the Lord’s leading for the local church. For a number of years now, the elders have been sensing a renewed call to local or regional ministry – beyond the walls of 190 Hoover Ave in Plover. In the 2010’s, Woodlands Church had many robust external ministries, but factors forced leadership attention to focus inwardly, beginning with the pandemic in 2020 and carrying through some key leadership changes recently. While we continue to have rich local outreach ministries and partnerships (Backpacks for Hope and TransAct Hope to name two), we have not been actively engaged multiplying churches.

As the elders have sensed this direction, they have been consistently asking, “How, Lord?” He has begun to show that a healthy multiplication ministry will be rich and varied, and that the ways we engage in His work of multiplying healthy churches will be exciting and sometimes even surprising.

Our mission stays the same: to be a Christ centered community helping people faithfully follow Jesus both locally and globally. We enter into a season of a renewed focus on regional ministry by resourcing, supporting, and launching local churches.

A few clear points. First, when Jesus comissioned his disciples, He told them to “make disciples of all nations, baptizing them… and teaching them to obey everything I have commanded you” (Matthew 28:19-20). This is the work of the church – to go and make disciples. This is our work at 190 Hoover – to help every person God calls to this local church to more fully and faithfully follow Him.

But Scripture is also filled with examples of how local churches support and grow other local churches, so that disciple-making ministry can be multiplied. In Acts 13, while the leaders of the church in Antioch were “worshipping the Lord and fasting, the Holy Spirit said, “Set apart for me Barnabas and Saul for the work to which I have called them.” So the church commissioned them to multiply healthy churches – and they did!

Later, as Paul is ministering at those churches he planted, he invites many of them to raise funds to support other churches (1 Corinthians 16:1-4, Romans 15:25-27).

Both of these moments are clear examples of local churches working to multiply other local churches. But perhaps the most compelling biblical evidence is that supporting other churches ministries is one of the most selfless acts of service possible. When we serve at our church, or give to our church, we benefit in some way. But when we serve for the benefit of another church, we fully embrace Jesus’ encouragement that, “even the Son of Man came not be served, but to serve” (Mark 10:45), and, “For it is more blessed to give than to receive” (Acts 20:35).

Actually, this isn’t new! Woodlands has been part of multiplying healthy churches ever since we were planted!

Woodlands was planted by 17 members of the Evangelical Free Church of Wisconsin Rapids back on July 28, 1952.

Over the years, we’ve supported multiple church plants through resource sharing, encouragement, and support, including those in Marshfield, Antigo, and Montello.

We launched a campus in Wisconsin Rapids which was then launched as an independent church, Crossview Community Church, in 2016. This faithful church has many attendees who at one point were Woodlanders until God called them on mission into Wisconsin Rapids.

Internationally, we partner with churches that have robust church planting processes and networks. In early 2026, Woodlands sent a short term team to Bolivia, who then walked and prayed in other communities, seeking God’s leading for church planting, just as we have challenged our congregation to do.

This is actually not a new thing. We’re just seeking to do it with a little higher intentionality, now.

It will happen as the Lord leads! But, this is not a ‘one and done’ vision, but rather a posture and a long-term direction. We envision seeing many churches grown, strengthened, and even launched over the next decades. This is a primary missional direction of Woodlands church.

We are not in a rush to make this happen, but we are in a rush to follow God’s leading. When He leads us in a direction, we’ll look to follow faithfully.

Woodlands Church is responsible to the individuals who have been entrusted to it! If this vision hinders or hurts ministry to the men, women, children, and families who call Woodlands their church home, we are doing ourselves a disservice. We don’t envision any step backs or slow downs on our many ministries and local iniatives, including our rich history of local outreach and partnerships.

At the same time, this vision will invite the attendees at Woodlands to stretch, grow, get invovled, and think missionally in ways they haven’t been asked before. There will be more chances for serving, growing, giving, and going than before. We will have more chances to be grace-filled, more necessity to be grounded in prayer and God’s Word, and more ways to be gathering as God’s people. This vision helps multiply the embodiement of the priorities of the church.

No, we’re specifically not just planting churches. We want to see more healthy churches, and this might involve planting, but it also might not at all. This could include launching campuses, church revitalization, church partnerships, church strengthening, sharing resources and expertise, or many other options. We want to keep as open of a hand as possible, knowing that God often calls us to do the unexpected.

There are a number of different routes this may take. We expect that each process will be different, because no two churches are the same! But, here are a few options:

• We might be led to a partner church that needs resources or equipping to grow and strengthen.
• We might be led to a church that is on the brink of collapse, that we invite to become a campus with a vision for autonomy.
• A small group meeting in a neighboring community might be led to grow and become a church campus, developing a vision for autonomy.
• We might be led to launch a cultural campus or venue, perhaps for our Hispanic or Hmong brothers and sisters.
• We might pick a location and intentionally build a launch team to plant a campus, with a vision for autonomy.

There are other options as well. We are seeking the Lord’s leading!

Over the past 30 years, a very successful model of church multiplication has developed that includes multiple ‘campuses’ related to a single church. These campuses have their own staff but are part of one larger church.

If Woodlands were to launch campuses in surrounding communities, these campuses would share the Woodlands DNA, and would focus on strong, biblical teaching (and we do not expect to use video – each campus would have its own teacher), a warm, welcoming enviroment, and discipleship ministries for all ages.

We see this model as a bridge to multiplication, with the important note that we would plant or build campuses with a vision for autonomy. Our ultimate goal would be to see campuses launched as independent churches – still within a network of churches working together, but with its own bylaws, leadership team, budget, vision/values, and more. The process for developing those independent features would be overseen by leadership team.

We’ve gotten a number of questions about this. At the root of it, we’re talking about the types of churches we want to grow – we’re not implying there aren’t many healthy churches already throughout Central Wisconsin! At the same time, we don’t just want to multiply churches, we want to multiply healthy churches.

What makes a church healthy? There are many factors, but our sermon series on Revelation 1-3, The 7 Churches, pointed towards a number of priorities that Jesus values:

• Healthy churches remember their first love, Jesus.
• They want Jesus’ approval over anything else.
• They’re faithful witnesses to the life changing power of the gospel.
• They lead with grace and kindness, loving others.
• They do not tolerate sin, but seek to walk in the holiness that Jesus calls us to.

From a leadership perspective, a few aspects of healthy churches would be:

• Biblically rich with a clear emphasis on the authority of Scripture
• Stable growth and leadership, rather than a revolving door of attendance or leadership
• Financial stability and faithful stewardship of time, talents, and resources
• Healthy churches know how to navigate conflict well – they love and respect one another despite differences

There are many additional aspects.

It would be missional. It would be sacrificial. It would be exciting.

Let’s imagine Woodlands feels led by God to start a new campus in a surrounding community, with a vision for autonomy. After developing a lead team, a vision would be cast and we would seek to form a launch team – families and individuals who might commit to this campus for a certain period of time (say, 2 years). The rest of the church would be invited to visit regularly. This new team would go, in many ways as missionaries, into that community. Some might live there, others might need to travel there. But over those next years, they would walk through challenges, opportunities, growth, and development. We would trust God to work through the leadership and investment of these local missionaries!

Or, perhaps we’re partnering with a central Wisconsin church to help them grow stronger. Missionary families might be called, invited to go for a time, and encouraged and empowered. This would be an exciting, powerful, but sacrificial and growing season for everyone involved.

First and foremost, we trust the Lord. He provides for His church. It’s also worth noting that biblically, God almost always calls His people into places of dependence. His commandment for His people, in their rhythms and with their resources, is to depend on Him. And so we seek to.

We see our mortgage debt as a primary obstacle to this vision. If we eliminate our mortgage, it will unlock a significant amount of annual funds – at our current budget – that can be redirected toward the multiplication of health churches. The church is prayerfully considering a capital campaign to eliminate our mortgage.  If we do eliminate our mortgage, those funds can support the hiring of campus pastors, additional ministry budgets, other church resourcing, and more.

It is not our intention or expectation to go into additional debt for any of these efforts, nor do we anticipate capital campaigns specifically focused on launching a campus or church. At the same time, we know the Lord may call us to do things we don’t anticipate.

We’ve used the term “Central Wisconsin” broadly to describe the area between Westfield and Wausau, Appleton and Neillsville. This is just a rough estimate.

But there’s an interesting biblical connotation as well. When Jesus gave the command to his disciple to minister, “in Jerusalem, Judea and Samaria, and to the ends of the earth,” we can see a pattern. They’re to ministry locally (Jerusalem), regionally (Judea and Samaria), and globally (to the ends of the earth). Woodlands has a rich local and global mission. What about regionally? The region of Judea and Samaria was about 80 miles apart, and Jerusalem sat in the center.

While this wasn’t a prescription of mission distance by Jesus, it is worth noting that our region of Central Wisconsin is roughly the same size as the disciples’ ‘Judea and Samaria.’

We’re excited to partner with the Forest Lakes District in this vision. It matches the vision of the District, to have an EFCA church within 25 miles of everyone within the district. You can see where the EFCA churches are in Central Wisconsin here.

Currently, the District is supporting with resources and wisdom. We’ll continue to work with them as we move forward. 

We don’t expect so. The EFCA is not an isolationist denomination, and we want to support churches pursuing health in whatever way we can. Importantly, we’ll look for churches that have a similar culture and who have a clear biblical foundation.

If it comes to launching campuses or church planting, those churches would be EFCA.

It is our intention and hope to partner with other like-minded churches throughout this process. If we’re at work in a region that has a like-minded church ministering there, we hope to work with them. There is no community so fully saturated in church ministry that another healthy church would be a detriment.

In our experience, we’ve found people asking this question mean something fairly specific: is Woodlands a perfect church? And the answer to that is “oh, we are very far from perfect!” There are still ministry gaps, people gaps, and growth edges… there are still plenty of ways for Woodlands to continue growing and maturing. That process won’t stop!

That said, Woodlands Church does continue to focus on robust Biblical application, helping people faithfully follow Jesus, and has many markers of overall health – both objectively and subjectively. We’ve baptized over 80 people in the last calendar year. We continue to see our Sunday morning attendance grow, while also expanding midweek ministries. We’re meeting more and more people in their brokenness, connecting them to community, and pointing them towards Jesus. These are healthy things.

And, recent church health surveys have shown that Woodlands is doing a strong job meeting perceived spiritual needs and providing broad satisfaction for our attendees. Those broad metrics shouldn’t be ignored, even while we acknowledge the church can’t meet all the needs there are. In fact, that very reason motivates us to multiply churches – more healthy churches means more healthy ministry!

Again, this doesn’t mean we’re anywhere close to perfect or finished, but it does broadly point towards a good level of overall church health.

If you have a suggestion or idea, please reach out! We would love to explore your idea!