About Us

History of Great Commission Ministries

In the Summer of 1996, Howard McIlwraith and I, elders at Milpitas Bible Fellowship, were becoming frustrated and uneasy with the health of the church. I had been the financially supported teaching elder at MBF since 1990. There was peace and unity in the body, but both of us felt there was something definitely missing. This forced us to do a comprehensive study of the New Testament teaching on the church. The results of our study compelled us to take Milpitas Bible Fellowship in a new direction.

We saw from Scripture that the early church met in homes, that the teaching of the church was often interactive, that participatory meetings were the norm, that the Lord's Supper was held as a full meal, and that the church was led by a team of co-equal elders. With this new insight into the Church, we boldly set out to reform our church practices. You can read about these reforms in the article One Church's Attempt to Obey God's Word. We began to emphasize house meetings during the week where each one was encouraged to bring something to edify the rest and where a meal was enjoyed together. We instituted a monthly Agape Feast where the whole church came together for a meal, worship, mutual exhortation, teachings, songs, readings, and the Lord’s Supper. We instituted a question/answer session at the end of the Sunday morning teaching where members of the church could share their insights or ask their questions. We arranged the chairs in a semi-circle, so that the members of the church could talk directly to one another, rather than at the back of someone else’s head. With these outward changes we began to see some healthy body life changes. The church began to spontaneously get together for fellowship after Sunday morning church at local fast food restaurants. There was more mutual sharing and exhortation taking place during the week. We really saw God’s blessings on our church.

After all our reforms, however, I found that we had basically shifted from a traditional church model to a cell church model. What I was seeing in Scripture, was that the early church did not follow our cell church form, but was actually a collection of many house churches. With that in mind, I went back to the church and encouraged them to prayerfully consider reorganizing our one large church into a collection of house churches. We could either sell our building, or use it occasionally when all the house churches wanted to gather together. Although Milpitas Bible Fellowship had bravely made many new and radical changes to our church life, many were not willing to take this final step. Although all of the elders were in favor of moving out of the building into house churches, I knew that if we forced the change, we would likely split the church. Thus, I asked the church if they would consider sending me and my family out to plant house churches in another location, to which they readily agreed.

As a fruit of my study in the book of Acts, I had decided that it was more Biblical to plant churches in teams rather than alone. Thus, my wife, Debbie, and I began to ask other families if they would consider moving with us to another location to plant house churches. After about the seventh rejection, I had about given up hope. However one evening I got a call from Lane Manuel, an old friend of mine. Lane and I had independently from one another made many identical changes in our theological understandings, especially our understanding of the New Testament church. Lane asked me if I knew of any house churches up in Sonora, California where he lived. I searched on the internet for a church that Lane might be interested in visiting, but couldn’t come up with a single one. At that point I began to wonder if Lane might be the one I could team up with to plant churches.

Our family visited the Manuels in the Fall of 2000 to discuss the venture, and all of us were excited about the possibility. We began to look for a house in the Sonora area, and within two months had sold our house in Milpitas, bought a house in Sonora (a five minute walk from the Manuels!) and were completely moved in!

Our first efforts at gathering as a church were pretty sparse. At first it was only the Manuels and the Andersons, and occasionally another family who attended for a while. However, within a few months, word was spreading via the grapevine about this new church plant, and several other families were attending.

Over the next several years the church grew until we split into three different churches that would meet monthly at a large home in a central location. Eventually, because many families moved away, we consolidated into 1 church again. In July, 2007 we evaluated our ministry in Sonora and decided we needed to have a Biblical Mission that the whole church would embrace and work towards. This Mission includes Evangelism, Discipleship, and Community. In order to have a more visible presence in our community, we are starting an outreach ministry called The Dragnet on August 25, 2007. This will be a verse-by-verse expository teaching held on Saturday evenings at 5:30 at the Sonora Blood Bank. We are gearing this meeting toward ministering the gospel to non-Christians. At the same time we are strongly encouraging intentional lifestyle evangelism by the entire church, and individuals within the church to form small discipleship groups.

Our goal is to make disciples who will make disciples who will make disciples. As this goal is achieved we will plant a network of house churches -- each one with the goal of reproducing and planting other house churches.