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...]