MINNEAPOLIS, MN (June 26, 2014) — The Northwest Conference (NWC) has embarked on an ambitious goal of planting 50 churches by 2025.

Mike Brown, the director of church planting, noted that 83 percent of the population in the region does not attend any church. “It’s important that we speed up how quickly we plant churches to see the impact we would like.”

The “50 by ’25: Our Mission to Plant,” initiative was announced earlier this year at the conference’s Annual Meeting. “We need the support of our local churches to be able to plant,” Brown said. “We want to see new churches in every corner of the NWC, not just in the Twin Cities, but all across the region, because the need is huge.”

Nearly one-third of people under 30 are religiously unaffiliated. Planting churches is the most effective means of reaching people who are unchurched, Brown says.

In 2013, more than 8,000 children, teenagers, and adults became Christians at Covenant churches started since 1993.

Covenant church plants enjoy one of the highest success rates of any denomination: 80 percent of new church plants become healthy and self-supporting churches within the first five years.

Noel Castellanos, the CEO of the Christian Community Development Association, has praised the denomination’s work. “Wherever a vital church planting effort with a deep commitment to Christian community development principles is birthed in a marginalized neighborhood, great things happen for the kingdom. No one is doing a better job of recruiting, equipping, and launching these church efforts than the Evangelical Covenant Church.”