by Eric Reed & Lisa Misner/The Illinois Baptist
SPRINGFIELD, Ill. (BP) – Church leaders from the central states engaged 12,000 hours of training, teaching and worship at the three-day Midwest Leadership Summit meeting in Springfield, Ill., Jan. 23-25. In multiple plenary sessions led by national SBC speakers and church-planting practitioners, and in 80 breakout sessions, almost 1,000 leaders shared and received equipping for ministry in their unique Midwest settings.
The biennial event brings together nine Baptist conventions covering 12 states. It is sponsored by Lifeway Christian Resources, GuideStone Financial Resources, the North American Mission Board and Woman’s Missionary Union.
On the agenda for this year’s conference were:
- Lifeway Christian Resources President Ben Mandrell
- Guidestone Financial Resources President Hance Dilbeck
- Guidestone Director of Pastoral Wellness Mark Dance
- North American Mission Board Vice President Trevin Wax
- NAMB Send Network President Vance Pitman
- Midwestern Baptist Theological Seminary Assistant Professor Jared Wilson
- Woman’s Missionary Union Executive Director Sandy Wisdom-Martin
Mandrell opened the activities on Tuesday, Jan. 23, with an early bird session on “the short bench,” the difficulty faced by many churches in finding and developing leaders.
“Multiplication is one of the most intimidating things in ministry,” Mandrell said of raising up leaders. He cited statistics showing that in some states, as many as 27 percent of churches are searching for pastors – a process that is harder and takes longer than in times past. “Who is the next generation, and how will we find them?” Mandrell asked.
Using Robert Coleman’s The Master Plan for Evangelism as a guide, Mandrell offered eight steps for a mentoring process that draws young people into ministry in the same way Coleman advocated sharing the Gospel in his classic work. “You can’t mentor in a microwave,” the Tampico, Ill., native and Colorado church planter said. Mentoring takes time. Mandrell illustrated from the pastor who mentored him early in his ministry.
“Jesus was always building His ministry for the time He was gone,” Mandrell told the packed room. “How would your agenda shift if God said, ‘You’re going to be out of there in three years’? Jesus was always working himself out of his job.”
In the opening plenary session, church planter Stephen Love of Redemption City Church in South Bend, Ind., pointed out that people are drawn to a vision that is bigger than themselves, as he told the story of his church planting. The Chicago native said, “Our goal is never to fill the seats, but to fulfill the Great Commission.”
NAMB’s Trevin Wax set the stage for the event with a clear depiction of the mission field, especially outside the buckle of the Bible Belt. He addressed the explosion of pseudo-religions in the age of the “be true to yourself” mindset. “We have to stop thinking about other religions or non-religions. … We have to answer ‘Why Christianity?’, but also why not all those other quasi, pseudo religions.”
The core tenet of the era is “expressive individualism,” Wax said, which finds its definition and meaning within the person, rather than from an outside source, such as the Gospel. This worldview creates so many versions of reality that it results in isolation and loneliness. “The beauty of the Gospel is that it does not isolate us,” Wax said.
Worship is being led by David Higgs, Associate Pastor of Lincoln Avenue Baptist Church in Jacksonville, Ill., and a team of seven from Illinois churches.
The Wednesday schedule includes five breakout slots, a luncheon hosted by GuideStone Financial Resources and an evening plenary session. The Summit concludes on Thursday after one more breakout slot and a final plenary session.
The Midwest Leadership Summit started as the North Central States Rally in the mid-1950s to encourage Baptists in a largely unreached area outside the SBC stronghold. The rally was staged between two SBC annual meetings in Chicago in 1950 and 1957. It was part of a move to create new local associations and plant churches in midwestern cities. The event met every three years, then switched to every two years in 2018.
In the Midwest today, self-identified evangelicals range from 18.7 percent in Wisconsin to 32.7 percent in Missouri. Illinois claims 23.7 percent evangelical believers.
In day two of the gathering, Vance Pitman, president of NAMB’s Send Network, encouraged pastors, “The size of the church does not determine the significance of the church. The size of the mission determines the significance of the church.”
Noting it might be controversial, Pitman said, “Church planting is not the goal. The church that you are planting one day is going to die. All the churches that were planted in the New Testament are all dead and gone. … But the kingdom of God is alive and well.”
Then where does the local church fit in? To introduce people to Jesus, disciple them, and launch them into serving Him. “We’ve made the local church the goal,” said Pitman. “We’re doing it wrong. The church is a tool for establishing the kingdom of Jesus.”
Pitman said, “The church being born isn’t the finish line of God’s activity. It’s the starting line.”
Church planter Aaron Taylor from Columbus, Ohio, said his congregation, Living Hope Baptist Church, runs 120 on a “banner day,” but is impacting its city in a big way. The church started a free furniture store, Finding Hope Center, three years ago with virtually no inventory or funds, only God’s calling.
When space across from the church opened up, Taylor asked the landlord to give the church 30 days. “It was going to cost $25,000 to pay rent for a whole year,” he said. “We did not raise $25,000. God did it in 22 days, and we raised $31,000.”
A year later Taylor received a call about connecting with a friend who had a storage unit with some furniture he wanted to give away. “We pulled up and it was the Midwest Distribution center for La-Z-Boy Furniture, and we found out the director of that facility loved Jesus a whole lot,” Taylor said. They were given permission take as much scratch and dent furniture as they wanted. Over the course of the last few years, the church has given away more than $700,000 in furniture and shared the Gospel with 350 families.
“We’re living in the middle of a miracle,” Taylor said.
Healthy pastors
GuideStone leaders addressed pastoral health in a luncheon the financial institution sponsored. President Hance Dilbeck picked up a theme he introduced at the Illinois Baptist State Association Annual Meeting in November – pastoral self-care. “If God is calling you to oversee the flock, you’ve got to oversee yourself,” he said, citing 1 Timothy 4:16.
Paul tells Timothy to guard the self and the doctrine. More pastors fail at the issue of the self than the doctrine, Dilbeck said. “If we mess up in these two areas, it’s all going down the tubes – if we get the doctrine wrong, or we don’t pay attention to ourselves,” he said.