Why We Exist

Fueling Churches in Hometowns Everywhere

We are passionate about bringing gospel saturation to rural communities and hometowns through missional churches driven by relevant strategies.

What is a hometown?

  • A hometown has its own social ecosystem.

  • A hometown has a common culture and values.

  • People are proud of their hometown.

  • In a hometown, all the kids go to the same high school.

  • Multiple generations of families choose to stay in a hometown.

Why plant in hometowns?

  • Hometowns are often neglected by church planting movements that focus on large urban/suburban areas.

  • Hometowns have historically been served by mainline and denominational churches which are in steep decline due to the lack of a transformative mission and message.

  • The evangelism growth rate in hometowns is usually negligible.

  • The demographic of church attenders in hometowns is aging, leaving behind young families and young adults.

 

Our values define our culture.

 

  • Relationships: We actively love one another, maintain unity, and build influence through relationship, not mandate.

  • Leadership: We are a leadership culture and therefore follow and foster qualified visionary leadership that functions with accountability, transparency, and collaboration.

  • Local Church Autonomy: we value strong, committed partnerships which complement local church authority.

  • Common Strategy: We are committed to aligning the church with the mission of its Founder.  We are giving our lives away to lead churches that inspire Jesus-followers to reach those who are far from God, equip them with a faith that matters, and send them out to reach others who are far from God.

  • Target Audience: We are following a specific calling to bring relevant churches to rural America and hometowns everywhere.

  • Commitment to Mission: We believe the local church is the hope of the world and so we partner together to go further and faster in the mission of planting prevailing churches.

  • Organizational Integrity: We are committed to organizational best practices, transparency with our partners, and wise financial stewardship.

  • Belief: We maintain doctrinal fidelity through alignment with a common statement of faith. We practice unity in essential beliefs, freedom in non-essentials, and love in all of our expressions.

Meet the Team

  • Paul Smith

    Paul is the pastor of Rivertown Community Church, a prevailing church in the panhandle of Florida with campuses in four hometowns. Having lived all of his life in rural America, he has a passion to see gospel saturation in hometowns through training church planters and pastors to lead prevailing churches. Paul’s greatest ministry passion is to help pastors and church planters build churches where unchurched people feel welcome and love to attend. Paul is the chief visionary and strategist for Hometown Network.

  • Brian Pipping

    Brian is the planter and pastor of BayLife Church on the Gulf Coast of Alabama. Having led prevailing multi-site churches over three decades of ministry, he is a specialist in pastoral development and church systems and strategy. Brian is passionate about helping pastors transition churches into prevailing mission centers and helping healthy churches reproduce themselves.

  • Philip Thurman

    Philip is the planter and pastor of Rally Church in Madison, Alabama. Philip grew up in Bangladesh as part of a missionary family. That has fueled his passion for evangelism and church planting here and around the world. Having given his ministry life to plant and develop two prevailing churches, Philip has a passion for seeing church planting networks extend their mission around the globe. Philip specializes in connecting missional churches with global opportunities.

  • Erica Davis

    For more than a decade, Erica has helped develop systems and strategies for prevailing churches. Erica loves helping churches improve their ability to evaluate ministry effectiveness and integrate strategic systems that lead to mission fulfillment.

On Mission Together

Hometown Network is founded by and is partnering with churches who desire to commit time, energy, and resources to see prevailing churches planted in hometowns everywhere.