Our Story
In 2015 Pastor Gregg Parris heard a word from the Lord. He had been pastoring Union Chapel Ministries in Muncie, IN for over 30 years, and God gave him a directive for the remaining decade of his ministry. As Pastor Gregg tells the story, he was working out when God knocked him off a treadmill and said, “Finish your ministry by planting churches”.
Gregg Parris
Gregg said yes to God’s invitation, and from that moment forward church planters began to fall out of the sky on him. The first move of God happened when Robin Wood visited a Sunday service at Union Chapel. Robin had previously planted over 75 churches with a network he had founded in the early 2000’s. When Robin heard Gregg’s vision for planting, he was all in. Robin became a church planting recruiter and coach for Pastor Gregg, and over the next several year he identified and assessed dozens of church planters.
Paul Irminger and Ryan Miller were the first two church planters to be funded by Union Chapel. Paul left Union Chapel’s staff and moved to Cape Corral, FL where he planted Gulfside Church. Ryan moved to the small town of Marietta, OH where he founded Pathway Community Church. These two early successes gave the members of Union Chapel great confidence, and that church then began to raise hundreds of thousands of dollars a year to launch new churches.
By 2023 several dozen new churches had been launched and the mission had outgrown the ability of Union Chapel to sustain the movement by itself. The decision was made to turn the church planting efforts into a standalone non-profit organization called the 99 Network. Pastor Ryan Miller became the first president of the organization and Pastor Gregg Parris was the founding chairman of the board. Today the 99 Network continues the legacy that was began at Union Chapel.
OUR VISION
We are committed to launching new churches across the world. Nothing wins people to Jesus like new churches, and we view it as our mandate to send out as many healthy new pastors as we possibly can.
OUR METHODOLOGY
We plant churches in a high level of relationship. We do not simply put money behind a planter and then walk away. We stay in a relationship with the planter through the first five years of their existence. We help them to build their first board, financial systems, leadership development systems, and preaching systems, among many other things. We are also committed to launching churches in non-traditional settings. One of our pastors, for example, has founded churches in prisons across America. Another has started a church in a crossfit gym.