STATE MISSIONS: All Churches are Welcome on God's Team!
I sometimes wonder what happened historically regarding the planting of new churches. When I was growing up in the local church, and even in my initial days of pastoring, there seemed to be little to absolutely no emphasis given to planting new gospel churches. Therefore, it seems as though we are behind the curve in penetrating the lostness of our world — locally, in our state,
nationally and globally. New scriptural churches help penetrate that lostness. We are blessed to have an association that loves lost souls and seeks to be seed sowers.
A church that is involved in spreading the gospel — regardless of size or the amount they can contribute — will find that helping others to help others is a powerful way of revitalizing their church. It doesn’t matter if it is $100, $1,000 or $100,000 a year, every contributing church becomes a serious and needed partner in fulfilling the Great Commission. From the smallest to the largest churches, we can all find our place in planting new scriptural churches. May every church, regardless of size, don the uniform of a “seed sower for God.”
New life sparks life! Just imagine being able to share a strong testimony about how your church is involved in reaching the lost world — through your church bulletin, with stories about lives being changed or a special offering time. You can give ongoing reports of what God is doing. You can even take some people from your church to this new church to help them over a week or even a weekend. May we penetrate the lostness of our world by planting new churches. Your church can do it!
From Our Missionaries
Misión Creciendo en Cristo (Growing in Christ), North Little Rock: Juan Carlos Posadas writes, “Friday and Saturday from 6:30-9 p.m., 24 people from our congregation participated in the missionary conferences organized by the Hispanic churches of Central Arkansas.
“We heard from Keynote Speaker John Michael Poulin. BMAA Hispanic Church Planting Director Elvis Garcia told us about his plan to reach Hispanics in the United States for Christ. BMA of Arkansas Hispanic Coordintor Michael Hight told us about his strategy to reach Hispanics in Arkansas. Roberto Marcelletti talked about his plan to reach Hispanics in Springdale and surrounding areas, and German Galindo spoke of plans to reach his community in Mexico City. Bro. German is currently a member of the Great Commission Mission, trained at El Faro church, and now plans to return to his country of Mexico as a missionary. This is a great reason to give glory to God! The event was a blessing and gave us the opportunity to share with members of the other Central Arkansas Hispanic congregations. We are already praying for next year’s conference.
“At the Sunday meeting, Oscar and Maricela Gomez dedicated their third daughter, Belen, to the Lord. I thank God for this couple. They are doing a good job in raising their daughters and guiding them in the way of our Lord. Let us pray that they continue to do this good work.
“Starting next week, our Sunday meeting will start at 11 a.m. We hope that changing our hours will not negatively impact congregational attendance. Thank you for praying this congregation.”
Ebenezer, West Little Rock: Ruben Isturiz writes, “I thank God that we were able to return to congregate in the temple in Chenal. For two weeks, we had to broadcast our services via zoom.us. We suspended our face-to-face services, all the workshops we had and my baseball chaplaincy time because of COVID-19. My family and I were sick. Kory started, then I
followed and then our children. The first week was difficult, and the second week was a little easier, but without being able to have contact with people or places where there were a lot of people. We complied with all the recommendations for the protection of other people. Keep praying, especially for my health. I have a recurrent cough and hope for complete healing.
“On Sunday, Aug. 28, it was a blessing to see the brethren and to be able to praise and glorify God with testimonies, songs and the edification of the Word of God. After finishing the celebration service, I went to the stadium for my chaplaincy time and one of the players made his decision for Christ. Now we have a celebration in the kingdom of Heaven.
“This week, we will be busy with workshops on Monday and Wednesday. We will also have the start of classes for the ‘Instituto Teológico Bautista Misionero de Arkansas’ – ITBMA, (Arkansas Theological Institute of Missionary Baptists). The Hispanic congregations of Central Arkansas decided to start the Institute because of the need to prepare the leadership of our congregations en Español. It is a joint effort of the five Hispanic congregations.
“Thank you for your prayers and support. Without you, it would be very difficult to be at the forefront of the spiritual battlefield. To God be the glory!”
Faith Chapel, Flippin: Johnny Shew writes, “We had a great week at Faith Chapel — God is so good! Our numbers are still very good, and we are going to try to rearrange the chairs this week to see if we can fit a few more in.
“We are busy trying to ‘count the cost’ of a new building. That is tedious work, but Bro. Paul is helping with that, and we treasure his experience and perspective.
“Karen and I had a very nice visit with Dana and Kimberly Williams from Cornerstone Baptist Church in Lowell. They were just passing through and stopped for lunch with us to tell us that Cornerstone had voted to help support us. They also gave us a very generous gift for our building fund. We love those folks over there, we love all of you and are humbled by the loving support we receive from so many of you.
“We thank you for your prayers — for us, Faith Chapel and for Flippin. Please continue; the Lord is answering them.”
The Table, Springdale: Clinton Morris writes, “We are getting a lot of work done. There is a lot of public awareness for both the church and our board game convention — TableCon. We had three first-time visitors because of TableCon, which was exciting to see.
“Drew just finished up his series in the Child of Light and will be joining me to finish up my Hebrews study. Drew is prayerfully considering which book we will begin for an exegetical study. One of the things we have become aware of is that we may need a secondary service time to be able to meet all the people that would like to come. The Sunday evening one does meet the needs of most of the people, but there is a growing part of the congregation that cannot make Sunday evenings. We are prayerfully considering what to do.
“Next week, we will be expanding into the martial arts studio for our kids’ ministry, and we are looking forward to crafting this ministry. We will be using the Good Soil Kids Program for our teaching resources.”
Faith Journey, Benton: Bryan Clay writes, “Everyone had a great week at Faith Journey! This week has been a busy one, with school starting back full force and getting back into a routine. We are praying for blessings and protection for our students this school year.
“I had opportunities to get out in the community and share the gospel with a few people that God brought into my path. There are so many people within our area with needs, and we want to be available to help meet those needs. I also reached out to our local city government to see what types of opportunities we may be able to become involved with to help meet those needs.
“We are going to try to get our name and mission out into the community by setting up a tent and table at different events in our city. There are more events this time of year, so we want to take full advantage of the great weather and lots of people! We will hand out information about who Faith Journey Mission is, as well as a few promotional items — pens, cups, etc. — to get more of our presence out into the community. I hope everyone has a blessed week!”
Misión Gracia Soberana (Sovereign Grace), NWA:Roberto Marcelletti writes, “Reading Psalm 13, I could observe something that is a key in the life of believers who live on this side of eternity. We live in a world that has been stained by sin and, by that sin, exposed many times to pain and anxiety. We can see in the Psalm as David passes from anxiety — the impatience, despair, anguish and doubt for the ‘silence’ of God — that leads him to ask three times, ‘until when, Señor?’ (v. 1-2).
“Since, as he said, anguish took hold of him. He told him ‘not to forget me, do not split your face from me,’ but we see how he goes from this state of anguish and despair to prayer. Prayer in discouragement leads him to open his heart to the Lord and he frees himself from all these feelings and experiences liberation and confidence that his God is a merciful God (v. 5). He remembers what true joy is for every believer.
“Like David, we must rejoice in the gift of salvation that has been given to us, and he ends with praise song of joy and joy to remember the most precious gift that human beings can receive — salvation. That Christ would take our place and die in place of a rebellious sinner like me, give me his righteousness and adopt me as a son is a great gift. In difficult times of anguish and doubt, how good it is to remember what we have in Christ.
“This week, we are still on mission. A motto we have is that we live the mission of God and that has led us to make new connections with a woman with whom we were eating and then we took her to the airport.
“We had seven people in our apartment this week who were being discipled, and we talked about ‘the holiness of Christ.’ A new person joined the discipleship.
“Patty started a new job and made three new contacts that we are going to invite to come to an evangelistic film next week.
“Friday, we were in Little Rock participating in the First Missions Conference of the Baptist Missionary Association of Arkansas, with the workshop — ‘the planting of Hispanic churches in the Northwest of Arkansas.’ We spent a beautiful time, where we were challenged to live the mission of God where God has placed us. It was said that the mission belongs to all believers, that the call is to make disciples and that the best method of evangelism is the planting of new churches. There is a great need for missionaries for South America and the Hispanic community throughout the continent.”
Pea Ridge: Jake McCandless writes, “Our heart is to reach our neighborhood and help others do the same, then see these groups unite in a church on mission. We took advantage of my daughter’s birthday to invite all our neighbors who had kids. We had neighbors come and had some great conversations. Our family and Connection Group helped connect with our neighbors, too. A few days later, we were included in helping with a love offering for a neighbor. God is opening doors to care for our neighbors!
“Continuing with how we got here, I shared how fascinated I became with the church in Iran. From there, I dove into what they were doing and how that would look in the West. My journey began in 2012 with Stand Firm. It introduced me to how the church around the world and in history responded to difficulty, this gave me an interesting viewpoint during COVID’s impact on the church. The longing to see a movement like in Iran here, and feeling we shouldn’t be the same after experiencing COVID, shifted my thinking to replicating Iran’s model using Discovery Bible Studies.”
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Paul White
Arkansas State Missions Director Paul White pens a weekly column to inform the BMA of Arkansas concerning Arkansas Missions’ activity and includes individual reports from each church planter.
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