CHARLOTTESVILLE, Va. (BP) – First Baptist Church (on Park Street), where Lottie Moon was baptized, is regaining its health. All it took was a new pastor who said it was too historically significant to wither away, who believed it could become vibrant again, and a congregation that responded to the pastor’s message. “First, I believed it could rebound,” Rob Pochek said. He’s been pastor of First Baptist Church on Park Street since 2016. “If you don’t believe God can breathe life back into … [Read more...]
Montana Baptist church expands reach with CP
EDITOR’S NOTE – The Missouri Baptist Convention currently has a missions partnership with churches in the Montana Southern Baptist Convention. HAVRE, Mont. (BP) – Chris Richards’ job for 28 years was keeping America safe. Since his retirement from the U.S. Border Patrol in 2015, he’s turned his focus to shepherding Immanuel Baptist Church in Havre. And in 2018, he added Chief Cornerstone Baptist Church, 30 minutes south on the Rocky Boy Indian Reservation in north-central Montana. As a … [Read more...]
American Indian embraces culture to lead people to Jesus
MONTANA (BP) – People don’t grow into mature Christians until they serve others. So says American Indian pastor and ministry leader Bruce Plummer, of Sioux, Assiniboine, and Cree heritage. In his multifaceted ministry, Plummer invites mission teams to come to Montana to serve with Montana Indian Ministries: picking up trash and handing out water and coffee in four weeks of powwow ministry, five weeks of Indian camp ministry for children and youth, and construction/maintenance/mercy … [Read more...]
Bruce Plummer Finds God in the Midst of Despair
Bruce Plummer, born on the Fort Belknap reservation, was twenty-one, stumbling drunk, and suicidal in a drenching rainstorm in Portland, Oregon, when with Native American awareness he crawled under a pine tree to avoid some of the wet. That tree was on church property, he realized the next day, as he watched vehicles coming and later going from the parking lot. “For the first time in my life, I heard God. That surprised me,” Plummer said. “He said, ‘Bruce, I want you to go down there and … [Read more...]
Military church at Pearl Harbor supports Cooperative Program
HONOLULU (BP) – Not until 16 years after Pearl Harbor was bombed on Dec. 7, 1941, did the pleas of an Air Force chaplain’s wife for a church to focus on the needs of military personnel come to fruition. First Southern Baptist Church of Pearl Harbor (FSBCPH), located just outside the gates of military housing, today draws between 50 and 100 mostly military personnel and their families. The number varies depending on deployments and change of duty stations, but the church’s commitment to … [Read more...]
Arizona missionary overcomes pandemic restrictions to reach Native Americans
ARIZONA – Eric and Brittany Gibbs have built their ministry to Arizona’s Native American community on the theme “You are loved,” and their "Live Love Ministries" seeks to make as many partner individuals and churches a part of that as possible. “Hospitality is key for followers of Jesus,” Eric Gibbs said. “Hospitality is bringing people into your life, not just welcoming them into your home. As a believer it is important to love people, all people, and especially those who are … [Read more...]
‘Together,’ ‘strategy,’ ‘genius’ among CP descriptors
EDITOR'S NOTE: April 7 is Cooperative Program Sunday in the Southern Baptist Convention. For information about the Cooperative Program, go to sbc.net/cp. MILES CITY, Mont. (BP) – A Montana pastor likens the effect of the Cooperative Program to a fence line. "It's like multiplying our labor, like building a fence two miles long together, rather than a quarter-mile if you had to do it alone," Jeff Cahill told Baptist Press. He's a rancher and pastor of Valley Community Church in the … [Read more...]
CP undergirds church’s vision for ‘Living Beyond Us’
BOLIVAR (BP) – For seven decades, First Baptist Church in Bolivar, Mo., has given at least 10 percent of its undesignated offerings to missions through the Cooperative Program. “We believe in the vision of those 1925 Southern Baptists,” pastor Billy Russell said of those who created the SBC’s channel of cooperative missions and ministry more than 90 years ago. “We’re better together. We can do more together in Gospel work around the world,” said Russell, who has led First Baptist for 13 … [Read more...]
CP speeds Central Asian outreach for Movement Church
RICHMOND, Va. (BP) -- A young Richmond, Va.-area church saw the effectiveness of the Cooperative Program this summer while helping a Central Asian village build water wells. "The work is thrilling," said Cliff Jordan, a church planter and pastor of the eight-year-old Movement Church, where about 250 people attend Sunday morning worship. Jordan appreciates International Mission Board (IMB) missionaries who laid the foundation for his mission team to arrive in the village and make a … [Read more...]
Prayer strategy augments church’s missions focus
PEORIA, Ill. (BP) – Pastor Joel Newton anticipates Woodland Baptist Church will grow closer to God with the congregation’s new emphasis on prayer, adding to commitments to missions giving and going. During the Jan. 22 Sunday morning worship, the church embarked on its new “Choose 2 Prayer Partner Project.” “Everything begins with prayer,” Newton told Baptist Press. “Prayer was a priority for the New Testament church.” Newton led his staff and other church leaders to build a prayer … [Read more...]
Rural, urban churches grow in multisite merger
DEVILLE, La. (BP) – The permanent tie between the rural Philadelphia Baptist Church of Deville, La., and the urban Horseshoe Drive Baptist Church in nearby Alexandria is less a merger than it is a joining of forces. About 750 people were in a March 2015 Sunday morning worship at Philadelphia Baptist Church Deville when the 30 remaining attendees at Horseshoe Drive Alexandria asked for help to keep the smaller congregation viable. “It’s very humbling and an honor they would see us as … [Read more...]
St. Louis pastors plan for more church plants
ST. LOUIS (BP) – Kenny “KP” Petty has been there and done that, so what he says rings true to others who are as he was. Too busy with his gang life to finish high school, he was shot for the first time at 17, and then again at 18. He went to jail at 19, facing (later acquitted of) an attempted murder rap. Today, not quite 20 years later, Petty and co-pastor/rapper Kyle Hubbard are in the fourth year of planting The Gate church in University City, an older, poverty-pockmarked neighborhood … [Read more...]