When Cornerstone Church of Ames started in 1994, everyone thought it was a church for college students because so many young adults attended. Although the vision was always to grow a multigenerational church that loves the next generation, church leaders had a particular heart for college students.
Over time, Founding Pastor Troy Nesbitt saw Cornerstone Church grow to megachurch size with several thousand worshipers on a typical Sunday morning. Mark Vance, who was stepping toward the role of lead pastor, led the college ministry, which was called The Salt Company. When Cornerstone began planting churches, they always had a Salt Company component. As students got involved in the discipleship process and came to faith, Salt Company functioned as an on-ramp into the life of the church where they could be discipled for a lifetime.
After successfully planting two churches in the area, the leadership team of Cornerstone first considered planting a church in every one of Iowa’s 99 counties.
“I’m an Iowa kid, and I knew there are more hogs than humans in those places,” says Vance, who is now lead pastor. “Meanwhile, I’m over at Iowa State seeing people come to Christ, one on top of the other. It hit me that God didn’t want us to do farm towns in Iowa—he wanted us to do university centers.”
Colleges have a defined calendar of events and rhythm of life, which allowed Vance and his team to create a schedule to match it. The first seven weeks they spend reaching out to the lost and lonely on campus. The next 16 weeks they build people to be formed in faith. The final six or so weeks they help students to be sent.
“We’ve run that basic playbook at whatever university we go to,” he explains, noting that there are approximately 403 major university campuses in North America where this could be done. Vance’s goal is that by the time his grandkids are ready to go to college, every university will have a Salt Company for them to get involved in.
“As a church growth strategy, the megachurch movement has been brilliant. As a reaching lostness and missionary strategy, it’s been a horrific failure,” he says, adding that the megachurch needs to think missionally by starting and planting new churches rather than merely marginally growing their existing church.
“If we’re willing to change our scorecard for success, the megachurch can be the tool of God to fuel a mission in a movement across North America,” says Vance.
Cornerstone’s shift came in 2016 when they stopped regularly tracking attendance. Their network of churches at that point was nonexistent. This past year, however, their network of churches had 26,000 people on an average Sunday.
“I never could have increased Cornerstone Church of Ames in that way,” notes Vance. “Multiplying growth always beats addition growth.”
At Cornerstone, they send out on average 10–20 of their best leaders per year to do church planting or missions.
“Cornerstone is a multiplying research factory,” says Vance, “that then fuels a national movement that impacts all major university campuses through Salt Network.”
Although people tend to think that university students are hard to reach, Vance disagrees. “The college campus is actually freakishly wildly open to the gospel.”
He notes that last year their network of churches baptized 2,100 people, most between 19 and 21 years old.
Vance advises church pastors never to water down the gospel message to be effective in this culture. “Hold fast to the Scripture. What the next generation resonates with is not hip and trendy but honesty and truth. That’s the secret weapon.”
He finds that students want a bigger purpose in their life. So, when they are offered truth, it’s like offering food to a starving person.
“Cheap faith gets destroyed when you go into university,” he observes. “However, deep faith not only survives but thrives—in every stage of life.”