March 23, 2025
TUCSON, Ariz. — At the Imagine One Day Conference in January, church leaders were challenged to think differently about discipleship, city engagement, and church planting.
Organized by Brian Hook, senior pastor of Aspire Church in Tucson, the conference presented successful church planting principles that Hook has seen work since the mid-2000s.
About 70 church leaders from southern Arizona and Phoenix, as well as a few from Las Vegas and Alabama, attended the conference at 22nd Street Baptist Church on Jan. 14. The conference has been held in Tucson for the last three years.
“We honed in on four principles … more focused on the essence of church planting,” said Hook, who is also a church planting catalyst for the North American Mission Board’s Send Network, a conference sponsor.
In the mid-2000s, Hook, along with conference speakers Bob Roberts Jr. and Omar Reyes, developed these principles when they worked together at Northwood Church in Keller, Texas. During that time, they saw God plant more than 60 churches, Hook said.
“What Imagine One Day does is reframe things American churches say they do, but reframes it to say, ‘Is that really what you do?’” said Hook, who planted Aspire Church in 2019. “Every American church would say they make disciples, but reframing it asks, ‘What is a disciple?’ And every American church would say, ‘We reach our city,’ but what does that look like?”
At the conference, Roberts shared some of the foundational principles for the church planting organization he founded, GlocalNet, a partner of Send Network, Hook said.
“The foundation is the kingdom of God, then making disciples, engaging our cities and really seeing the church emerge out of that,” Hook said. “We don’t start with the church. We end with the church. We focus on the kingdom, making disciples, engaging our city, and then the church emerges.”
Church planters as well as pastors and church leaders from established churches attended the conference. Hook said that while the conference casts vision, there are also opportunities for greater engagement.
A two-day GlocalNet training in Tucson May 9-10 will be followed by a regional cohort led by Hook that will walk through the principles on Zoom. The training and cohort are open to any church leader, not just church planters.
Hook prays that those who attended the conference were encouraged not to copy programs and models from other churches but to “scan heaven and see what heaven has for them.”
“We say if you focus on the church, you can miss the kingdom,” Hook said. “But if you focus on the kingdom, you’ll get the church.”
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