Stadia’s Discovery Event is a 3-day experience through which you will have the opportunity, in the context of community, to explore, demonstrate, strengthen, and be affirmed in your competencies and skills for starting a new church. Below, you can find additional questions that candidates typically ask about the Discovery Event.

We believe it takes all kinds of people to start all kinds of churches. Stadia’s Discovery Center serves potential new-church leaders in diverse contexts, modalities, funding structures and beyond! As explained on this site, Stadia’s Discovery process is a three-phased process. The first two phases, Exploration and Discernment, must be completed prior to consideration for a Discovery Event. At the end of the Discernment phase, after you have submitted your Discernment Reflection and participated in an interview with a Stadia Team member, you will then be eligible for an invitation to the event, which you will receive within 5 days from your interview.

While there is generally no direct cost to a church planting candidate to participate in Stadia’s Discovery Center, there is a cost of $5500 per candidate or candidate couple that we ask to be covered by the candidate’s sending church, network, or denomination.

If a candidate is not connected to a sending organization or if their organization cannot cover the cost, a scholarship application process is available—thanks to the generosity of Stadia’s partners and donors.

Participants are responsible for their own travel and hotel accommodations near the event location. While you’re traveling, you’ll cover your own meals. However, during the event, Stadia provides lunches, dinners, and plenty of snacks and drinks.

Yes, if you are married, your spouse must participate with you throughout the entire Discovery process, starting with Exploration and Discernment. You will see throughout the various instructions specifically where your spouse should submit something separately and where you are able to submit items jointly.

We believe married couples are together called to start a new church. For this reason, if you are married, it is important that your spouse participates in this process alongside you. Your shared participation will give you the opportunity to explore your calling and your unique gifts and abilities as well as the implication this has for the role each of you might play in starting a new church.

The only thing you need to bring with you to a Discovery Event is a computer or tablet. If you are married, and your spouse has a separate computer or tablet, they should bring it as well. Most of the Discovery Event relies on technology to keep our event as paperless as possible. Please let the Discovery Team know if you have any questions or needs regarding technology and/or accessibility.

Yes! Whether you’re called to lead a team or serve on a launch team, we want to walk with you. Check out She Starts Churches for more details on our initiative to better support women in church planting.

During the Discovery Event, you and your spouse, if married, will have the opportunity to explore, demonstrate, strengthen, and be affirmed in your competencies and skills for starting a new church. The Discovery Event, being a community-guided event, means that it will be important for you to have someone that knows you and your experience well from within the context of your own current ministry, and who can help observe and affirm your competencies through that lens.

Your observer should be someone who knows you from your current ministry context. Participants often invite the pastor from their sending church, a deacon or elder, someone from another church planting organization or network they are partnered with, or even a denominational leader or mentor. The role of the observer at a Discovery Event is to work alongside the other leaders and guides at the event to provide valuable feedback to the candidates.

If you receive an invitation to participate in a Discovery Event, it will be very important to invite your observer as soon as possible and provide them details about the dates and location. Your observer will be responsible for their own travel and hotel accommodations.

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• We believe God is the Creator and Ruler of the universe. There is one God who exists eternally in three persons: Father, Son, and Holy Spirit.
• We believe in Jesus Christ; his deity and his humanity; that he was conceived by the Holy Spirit and born of the virgin Mary; that he lived a sinless life; that He died in our place to bring us into a relationship with God the Father through the cross. We believe in His miracles; in His bodily resurrection; in His ascension to the right hand of the Father; in His present rule as Head of the Church; and that He will one day return in victory to rule forever.
• We believe in the Holy Spirit. The Holy Spirit is present in the world to make us aware of our need for Jesus. The Holy Spirit lives in every Christian from the moment of salvation and provides Christians with the power to live a fruitful Christian life.
• We believe that those who have not placed their faith in Jesus will exist eternally separated from God by sin, and those who have placed their faith in Jesus will exist with God through forgiveness and salvation. To be eternally separated from God is hell. To be eternally with God is heaven.
• We believe all people everywhere are created in the image of God and someone for whom Jesus died. We believe Jesus wants believers to live in unity as a way of pointing to the dignity and worth with which God created us and find equality across racial, gender, and class differences.