Association of Related Churches (ARC)
Association of Related Churches (ARC) belongs to the Charismatic and neo-charismatic networks family of churches.
Governance: network.
A church-planting network founded in 2000 in Birmingham, Alabama, by a group of pastors including Billy Hornsby (its first president), Chris Hodges and Greg Surratt. Planted churches are autonomous and often also relate to other bodies; ARC describes itself as a relationship network, not a denomination.
Not tracked by RCMS 2020. ARC reports having helped launch well over 1,000 churches; figures are self-reported and planted churches frequently hold other affiliations, so no congregation count is stored.
A relationship network that helps plant churches with launch-day crowds and paid-back seed money — founded in 2000 in Birmingham, and by its own account not a denomination.
Heritage
Founded in 2000 in Birmingham, Alabama by a circle of pastors including Billy Hornsby, its first president, Chris Hodges of Church of the Highlands and Greg Surratt of Seacoast Church. ARC — the Association of Related Churches — built a distinctive planting model: substantial seed funding that the new church repays once healthy so the money plants again, intensive training, and a launch-large strategy aimed at opening day crowds rather than slow builds. Planted churches are autonomous, frequently also related to other bodies, and ARC describes itself as a relationship network, not a denomination.
Theological family
Broadly evangelical and charismatic-friendly in the contemporary non-denominational key: gospel-centered preaching, life application, and expectation of the Spirit's work, with doctrinal details left to each church.
Who decides what
A network in the plainest sense: ARC funds, trains and relates; it does not govern, ordain for, or own its churches. Accountability is relational and financial (the repayable launch funding), not juridical.
What a first-time visitor would find
Typically a polished contemporary service — full band, practical preaching, strong hospitality culture — because the launch model favors excellence from day one; but each church sets its own worship.
What it has always cared about
Church planting as multiplication — money that replants itself; the local church as "the hope of the world" in its working vocabulary; practical care for pastors and their families.
Its gift to the wider church
ARC industrialized generosity in church planting: its repayable seed-fund model, where one launch finances the next, has started churches at a pace few denominations match and been studied well beyond its network. ARC reports having helped launch well over 1,000 churches; the figure is self-reported.
Commonly confused with
With a denomination — planted churches are independent and often hold other affiliations too; and with Acts 29, a parallel planting network with a Reformed confessional core where ARC's glue is relational and methodological.
Range of views inside it
Wide on doctrine within evangelicalism, and wide in scale from portable launches to megachurches; the planting method is the shared inheritance.
A note from the mapmakers: Nothing here may be asserted of a specific congregation, including whether it was ARC-planted or remains related. RCMS 2020 publishes no count for ARC, whose churches are counted under their own identities, so this record carries none; the launch figure above is ARC's own. Sentences drawn from this record hedge as "ARC-related churches typically…" and yield to the congregation's own materials.
Sources: Association of Related Churches — about (ARC) · Handbook of Denominations in the United States (Abingdon Press)
Moments this body was part of
- 2000 — The Association of Related Churches (ARC)
A group of pastors including Billy Hornsby, Chris Hodges and Greg Surratt founded ARC in 2000 out of Birmingham, Alabama, with a simple engine: healthy churches fund and coach new launches, and the launched churches give back into the next generation of plants. ARC reports having helped start well over a thousand churches across many denominations and streams.
ARC's model is structural generosity — churches exist to start churches, and the network's only claim on a plant is that it someday helps another.
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