Mountain West Region — A Wiki for Key SG Leaders

Working draft. Audience: a small circle of senior Sovereign Grace leaders. Format: wiki, not whitepaper. Read the page in front of you, follow the links that interest you, come back. Every link opens in a new tab so you don't lose your place.

The vision in one paragraph

This is a wiki-style website developed by Chris Oswald for key leaders within Sovereign Grace Churches. The goal is to facilitate thinking and discussion about the development of a new Mountain West Region — see the proposed map — over the next 3–5 years.

The Mountain West region is growing rapidly and is worthy of prayerful attention and cooperation across the entire Sovereign Grace family of churches.

I would suggest the formation of an ad hoc committee comprised of key figures with gifting or positioning strategic to the exploration of this concept.

If the national leaders don't want to put national-level spotlight on this issue, then my fallback recommendation would be to create an ad hoc committee within the Midwest/Northwest Region comprised primarily of church-planting committee members.

This committee would work to accomplish the things laid out in the committee charter — a re-shaping of the Mountain West development director's job description into collective committee work, sitting under the Regional Church Planter Coordinator (Chris).

Why this deserves an actual structure (and not just an email)

The Mountain West story is the rare case where a few independent threads happen to be pointing at the same place at the same time. None of the threads are sufficient on their own. Together, they describe a moment of denominational opportunity that's easy to miss precisely because each thread arrives in a different inbox.

• A regional footprint of three churches across five fast-growing states
• A demographic story about Idaho, Boise, Kalispell, and the western migration that has not yet been told inside SG
• A distinctive mission field of "reality respecters" — politically conservative, post-Christian, hungry for moral north and south, ripe for gospel proclamation
• A handful of named partners (regional, national, on-the-ground in Bozeman and Star) who are, if quietly, ready to act
• A charter — already drafted as a job description — that translates cleanly into committee work

Wiki form, rather than memo form, is the right shape for this because the threads connect non-linearly. A reader who comes in via "is this really a growth story?" should be able to follow the data first; a reader who comes in via "who would actually do the work?" should be able to follow the charter first; a reader who comes in via "is this a national or regional thing?" should be able to compare the national and fallback regional proposals side-by-side.

What I'm asking of the reader

1. Read this page.
2. Follow at least one link that interests you — preferably one that would change your mind if the data is wrong.
3. Come back here and tell me what you think — by reply, by call, or in the next time we're together.
4. If you find this convincing, help me decide between the national and regional committee paths.

There is no decision being asked for in this draft. Only attention.

Wiki page index

• 01 — Proposed Map — what the two-region split looks like geographically
• 02 — Growth Data — Boise, Idaho, the migration west, and where SG is missing it
• 03 — National Ad Hoc Committee — the primary recommendation
• 04 — Regional Ad Hoc Committee — the fallback if national leadership defers
• 05 — Committee Charter — the work, derived from the development-director JD
• 06 — Reality Respecters — the distinctive mission field framing
• 07 — Current SG Footprint — present 8 churches + 2 exploratory works, with the geographic-isolation problem
• 08 — Key Players — regional and national partners