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...]