TRACK A · PLANT IN THE U.S.
Send Network
NAMB’s church-planting arm — the practical pathway that assesses, trains, and walks alongside you and your sending church.
What it is | The church-planting arm of the North American Mission Board |
Reach | North America’s largest church-planting network |
Role | Equips and walks alongside sending churches as they plant; runs the planter assessment, training, and coaching pathway |
Leadership | Vance Pitman led Send Network from 2022 until early 2026, when he moved to a National Mobilizer role; the network continues under NAMB’s leadership |
Website |
What Send Network is
Send Network is how NAMB actually carries out church planting. It is described as North America’s largest church-planting network, and it does its work in keeping with the principle covered in the NAMB profile: it doesn’t plant churches directly — it resources the sending churches that do. Think of it as the engine room: assessment, training, coaching, and care, all built to take a called believer and a sending church from first conversation through launch and beyond.
Largest church-planting network in North America | 9 essential areas in the assessment | 12 leadership competencies in training | 1–3 yrs typical development pathway |
The church-planter pathway
This is the spine of Send Network and the part you’ll walk through personally. It is a pathway, not a single test:
1. Interest form and application. You begin by expressing interest and applying, in partnership with your sending church.
2. Online pre-assessment. Several questionnaires — completed by you and, if married, your spouse — help gauge readiness across your planting capacity, personal character, and marriage health.
3. The assessment retreat. If invited, you attend a two-day, in-person retreat where experienced assessors from your intended context measure your readiness across nine essential areas (calling, emotional and spiritual health, family dynamics, vision, leadership, communication, missional engagement, disciple-making, and social skills). Regions charge a registration fee — around $399 in one recent example — so confirm your region’s cost.
4. Results and a growth plan. You receive honest feedback and a personalized growth plan to work through with your sending church.
The three honest outcomes The retreat may affirm you’re ready to move into training; recommend you develop further in specific areas and reassess later; or, in some cases, redirect you away from lead planting altogether. All three are a gift — receiving honest clarity early can spare years of discouragement. (The full self-examination version of these nine areas is in the “Are you called?” section of this hub.) |
How Send Network trains
Assessment tells you whether and where to grow; training builds the capacity. Send Network Training develops leaders around 12 leadership competencies, and it is deliberately two things: contextualized — shaped to whether you’re planting in a city, on a campus, replanting an older congregation, or planting covocationally — and relational, built on coaching and mentoring in peer-learning groups rather than lectures alone.
Two key resources for sending churches
• The Multiplication Pipeline. A free leadership-development resource that helps a church discover, develop, and deploy missional leaders from within its own congregation — so planting becomes a normal outflow of church life rather than a rare event.
• Residencies. An intentional, hands-on process inside a sending church for training qualified leaders to plant — combining theological training, spiritual formation, real ministry experience, and church-planting skills. Some residencies even partner with Southern Baptist seminaries so residents can earn academic credit toward a degree while they train.
Built for covocational planters
Many faithful planters hold another job while planting, and Send Network actively supports covocational ministry with tools and contextualized training. Working a second job is not treated as a sign of weak faith or failure — it is an honored, common path, and the training adapts to it.
Care at the core
Planting is hard, and isolation is one of its greatest dangers. Care is described as central to how Send Network operates: coaching relationships, peer cohorts, and ongoing support so a planter and family are not left to struggle alone. This is one of the most practical benefits of planting through a network rather than entirely on your own.
A note on leadership
Worth knowing Vance Pitman — himself a church planter who founded Hope Church in Las Vegas — led Send Network from 2022 until early 2026, when he transitioned to a National Mobilizer role. Dhati Lewis led the network before him. As of this writing, the network continues under NAMB’s leadership, and the assessment, training, and care pathways carry on regardless of who holds the top role. As always, confirm current leadership and any fees at sendnetwork.com before relying on them. |
What this means for you
If your calling is to plant in the United States, Send Network is the practical door you’ll walk through: it assesses your readiness honestly, trains you around proven competencies, connects you to a sending church, and surrounds you with coaching and care so you don’t plant alone. Its contextualized, covocational-friendly approach fits a Slavic planter well — whether you’re launching a Russian- or Ukrainian-speaking congregation in a major metro or planting while holding another job to support your family in the early years.
Assessment tells you whether and where to grow; training builds the capacity; care keeps you standing — and a sending church keeps you accountable. That is the whole Send Network pathway in one line.
Send Network — an expanded profile within the Slavic Church Planting & Missions Hub. Leadership, fees, and program details change over time and vary by region; the data here reflects the most recent verified information and should be confirmed at sendnetwork.com and namb.net before publishing.