Episode Transcript
[00:00:02] Speaker A: Welcome to Missionize with the Missions Guys, a podcast of the Arkansas Baptist State Convention offering biblical and practical insight and strategies designed to equip and encourage missions leaders to carry on mission work. The goal is to fulfill the great commission from a church's local community to the ends of the earth. That is why we missionize.
Now, here are your hosts, the Missions guys, Sam Roberts and Quint Richie.
[00:00:31] Speaker B: Hey, welcome to Mission Knives.
[00:00:32] Speaker C: I'm Clint Richie here with our co.
[00:00:33] Speaker B: Host, Dr. Sam Roberts. And today is another big day for us that we have a second time guest that is joining.
Our first second time guest was Travis McCormick and it took us a year to get Travis. It's only taken about five months to get Tim Wicker back with us today. So, Tim, welcome back to Mission Eyes.
[00:00:56] Speaker C: Thank you very much for the invitation.
[00:00:58] Speaker D: Yeah, I feel like I'm letting Tim down with Travis. I had a horn and all that stuff and we blew like a birthday party and all that. Welcome, Tim.
[00:01:08] Speaker C: Just a privilege to be in the.
[00:01:09] Speaker D: Room with us today, Tim.
[00:01:16] Speaker C: I'll make my own party sounds here. Oh, good.
[00:01:20] Speaker B: If you're not familiar, Tim is the director of Send Network Arkansas and he has been in this role about five months now. Started officially February 1st.
And so, Tim, in those five months, we know you have figured out everything and got church planning batting a thousand again.
But tell us what's happening. What have you seen the Lord do over the last five months?
[00:01:47] Speaker C: I have learned that I have more questions than I have answered, but have also seen and heard a genuine heart from among our churches for planting new churches, for reaching new peoples with the gospel in and around their neighborhoods and communities across the state. But even beyond that, a lot of great churches here in Arkansas that are identifying guys in their churches and seeing what God is doing, recognizing that, pouring into them and being equipped to see send them out. And so it's been a fun five months. Is that what you said? I think so.
It's been a fun five months. I feel like it's been a whirlwind, but, but really good. Really encouraged by all that God has done and is doing.
[00:02:34] Speaker D: Yeah, every email or text or whatever that I get from Tim, he always ends it with, we'll figure this out.
We are still in the process of figuring this thing out.
[00:02:48] Speaker C: And, and for those of you that don't know, Send Network Arkansas is that partnership between the Arkansas Baptist State Convention and Send Network from the, with the North American Mission Board. And I get the privilege, the joy and the privilege. And I lean heavily on Dr. Dr. Sam getting to work with him as the leader of the missions team and the, the guys here in the state. So, so very thankful. Yes, we do communicate a lot and we, and we are trying to figure it out and we will get there.
[00:03:18] Speaker D: Multiple, multiple times a day, guys. But yes, it's exciting to see what God is doing, that God is calling out churches to plant churches. God is calling out individuals within churches to be those church planters.
It's a good day for church planting in Arkansas. Hey, Tim, the last time we were together we talked about briefly about a whole lot of stuff with SIN Network. And what is Sin Network? What are the processes that, that, that, that compose SIN Network? What are we offering to churches? How do churches get involved in church planting and where do planters come from? And all of these sort of things just briefly touched on each one of those.
We wanna kinda drill down on this episode in one of those areas. And that is the church mobilization pathway.
That's a pathway that NAM has created to say, hey, every one of our Southern Baptist churches, every Arkansas Baptist church is somewhere in this spectrum of this pathway when it comes to church planting.
So we want you just kind of walk with us through what are those levels of engagement in the church planting process to help our listeners understand maybe where they are, but also how to get involved and what are the next steps and levels of involvement and engagement in this whole process.
[00:05:02] Speaker C: Would be happy to. And that you're just kind of laying the groundwork for that. We believe, and we do, I think so scripturally. We as SEND Network. We as Send Network Arkansas, we as Arkansas Baptists, believe that churches plant churches. And so when we talk about levels of engagement, we're thinking through how Arkansas Baptist State Convention churches are engaged in that process. At what level? How involved are they in that?
In that being the churches that identify the needs, being the churches that are reaching out, being the churches that are sending out and partnering together with these new church plans. So I think it's helpful to think, okay, yes, as Arkansas Baptists, we are engaged in church planting. Every church. And I don't know how far to go ahead of you here, but every cooperating church here in Arkansas, every church that gives through the cooperative program, gives to Annie Armstrong gives is a part of the process. You're part of church planting here in Arkansas and throughout the country through the SEND Network church plants all across the country. So yeah, level one, I think is kind of the. Yeah, we are all of us who give through the cooperative program. Give, whether it's monthly or quarterly or however you put it into your budget. Cooperative program. Giving, giving the Annie Armstrong Easter offering, automatically, you're automatically a part of church planting. You're contributing to it. You're contributing to the needs of the church planters, to the strategies. You're helping other churches.
[00:06:35] Speaker D: It's like churches in Arkansas giving to Dixie Jackson. And because you're giving to Dixie Jackson, you're involved in disaster relief, you're involved in mission partnerships, you're involved in medical, dental clinics that happen throughout the year, you're involved in crisis pregnancy centers, you're involved in all of these different ministries because of your gifts to the Dixie Jackson Arkansas mission offering.
And as you give to Annie or as you give to the cooperative program, then those proceeds, those gifts, are used to support our church planting efforts through NAM in the various ways those are distributed. So as you give, you are a contributing church to church planting efforts.
There's that level of engagement for the local church. Now, what's the next step in that process?
My church is giving to the cooperative program.
We're giving to Annie Armstrong. So, hey, we're part of church planting in Arkansas.
What, what's the next level of engagement for my church?
[00:07:48] Speaker C: Cooperating churches as a whole, they're investing, they're giving the resources so that church planting can happen in a general sense through the cooperative program.
That's the genius of who we are, Southern Baptist, that we are involved in things greater and bigger than us. Even as smaller membership churches, we can be. We are involved.
We also pray. Cooperating churches are praying for church planting.
We have different avenues to encourage that praying, a monthly prayer calendar, and of course, the SEND network prayer calendar that comes out each year. Cooperating churches are praying and then they're investing.
The next step and the next stage is when a church says, hey, we want to be more engaged, we want to be more involved. Can you connect us with a, with a planter here in Arkansas or elsewhere? Can we come alongside? Can we send a volunteer team? Can we be more a part, hear the stories of what's happening? And that would be the supporting church, a church that says, we're going to pray, we're going to continue to give through the cooperative program, may even give extra.
But we're going to support this guy and we're going to kind of adopt him as our own as our missionary here in Arkansas. And so we've got several of those. We've got several churches here in Arkansas that are partnering together through supporting. They're praying, they're sending volunteer teams, they've built a relationship with the church planter that maybe somebody else has already sent out, but they want to get more involved. And so they're having a. Putting a face. Putting a face to the church planting efforts here.
[00:09:31] Speaker D: Yeah. And just just to kind of back up just a little bit of what you said just so our listeners. I want to repeat this every opportunity we get. What one of the best ways that each and every church in our state can be involved in the church planting process.
Not only just giving to a cooperative program and any but intentionally praying for our planters and those church plants. And we have a process in place here at the Arkansas Baptist State Convention that allows you to do that.
As a matter of fact, this year, this calendar year, one of our goals is to connect 150 of our churches as prayer partners for our 34 church plants that we have that are currently receiving some type of funding through Send Network Arkansas, roughly about five churches per church planter.
And you can go to the missions website, click on Church Planting and you could there is a tab there for the prayer emphasis. There are three main areas when you go to church planting there that pop up.
One of those will list every one of our planters and we'll give you an opportunity of adopting that planter for prayer so that your church can say to that church planter and that church plant, during this year or during this season, we are going to be praying intentionally for you.
That may be every Sunday, that may be once a month. That may be in small groups, Sunday school classes. But that's an excellent way for your church to get to know a church planter, a church plant and be praying for them. We believe in prayer so much. It's the foundation of everything we do with church planting. Our planters need Arkansas Baptist churches praying for them.
So get involved there.
That's a step just before what we're talking about supporting, which is that partnering with the church plant.
So next level engagement after that too.
[00:11:59] Speaker B: Let me say before we go there though, a lot of times as churches just begin praying that leads to the supporting. It does that the Lord works in the hearts of the church and they want to move beyond praying.
How can we go, how can we support them further?
Obviously not minimizing prayer, but how can we go see these people, serve with these people, maybe even give directly to these folks. But it begins with that foundation of prayer and what God does through that as you're praying for them.
[00:12:31] Speaker D: And it's amazing, Clint Tim, that that same model, we see it on the international level too. And Tim saw this as a missionary with imbalance in Russia.
When churches begin to adopt a people group or to adopt a region of the world and say we're going to pray for.
And they're intentional in praying. They've got Sunday school classes praying. They're mentioning that people group on a Sunday morning in front of the congregation. They've got a wall of the church with stats on that people group, where they're located, how many there are, how many believers, how many non believers, what access to the gospel do they have?
Quite often what begins as just praying kind of transforms into groups going a vision group goes to say, how can we connect with this IMB missionary? How can we send teams to help and what other ways can we assist in this ministry to. To get the gospel to the people?
Same process here with church planting begins with prayer.
And from prayer support, God leads churches at different levels of support, additional support for that church plant and that planter.
[00:13:59] Speaker C: We did a survey of our church planters a few years ago and asked them some of the things that were the they were asking for needing, wanting, and the number one request that came back was prayer. They recognized and we all recognize, you guys listening, recognize that the battle for the hearts and souls of the lost here in Arkansas is a spiritual battle and we fight it on our knees. And so it wasn't a surprise, but it was a pleasant surprise.
[00:14:29] Speaker D: They recognized it's just a confirmation of what we need, prayer, what we believe. We found the same thing back last December when we did a special podcast on what our IMB missionaries want most for Christmas.
Top of the list for everyone. Pray for us, pray for us, Pray for our family. Pray for the opportunities of sharing the gospel.
When we're involved in ministry, we understand the importance of prayer. So what's that next level there?
[00:15:00] Speaker C: You've got cooperating church that's praying, giving through the cooperative program. And Annie Armstrong, you've got a supporting church that is, is taking the next step and praying for a specific planter, partnering together with a specific planter, sending, sending volunteer teams, getting prayer letters, bringing them in for, for different events and encouragement.
And then you got the next level, if I can use that word there. The next stage is becoming ascending church. Ascending church is a church that takes responsibility for the church plan. They are the old terminology. They would be the mother church, the sponsor church of the new work.
They're the ones that are going through the processes, some of them legal, some of them background, some of them training, some of them encouraging, some of them growing. But they're identifying people and saying, okay, we believe in this guy, we believe in his vision, say this guy, this couple, their vision for the church plant. We're going to come alongside and do everything we can do to help make them successful, help them reach the population. So it's a supporting church on steroids. You're doing all the same things, but you're taking the lead in it and you're connecting with them.
The sending church is also kind of the ones that walk along with them for the whole duration, for the five years or six years of partnership. They're providing some leadership, they're providing coaching for the planter besides the resources that they give.
And we as SEND Network Arkansas, when we partner together with a church to plant a church, we are partnering together with the sending church. They are the one through whom the resources go through whom the paperwork is taken care of.
They're the lead church planter, lead sponsor, partner, sending church for the new work.
[00:17:01] Speaker D: Yeah. So what kind of additional training workshops do we offer in that area, Tim, for those churches that are saying, hey, we want to be involved in church planting, we want to plant a church.
[00:17:21] Speaker C: That's a great question, Sam. Glad you asked.
We had one of the things that was.
You asked what's been going on in church planting. We've had two sending labs here in Arkansas this spring, one up in Jonesboro, one here in Little Rock. And I think total, we had 20 something churches, different churches that attended those for that asking that very question, saying, okay, how do we get more involved? How do we become a sending church? And so we have these, these regular sending labs, a workshop type setting where pastors and their leaders come in and we walk through a process of what it means to be ascending church.
How do you identify guys? How do you help equip them through the process? How do you coach them after they've got started?
How do you support them? What are some best practices in supporting those new works? And so the sending lab, and we've got one scheduled for this fall, October 9th, going to be in the Fort Smith area if anybody's interested in being a part of one of those, those events. But it's very specific.
Walking leaders through the process of what it means to.
[00:18:32] Speaker D: Is that a one day or a two day?
[00:18:34] Speaker C: It's a one day event. It's a one day event. Nine to four. Okay.
Like I said, we've had a couple of them. They were really well received, excited about what God is doing in those 20 plus churches again, that have sensed a desire to take that Next step there.
[00:18:51] Speaker B: All right, so we've got levels of engagement, cooperating, supporting, sending. What's the fourth level?
[00:18:58] Speaker C: This is the level where a church does the sending thing over and over and over again. They've got processes in place, they've got systems in place to where they're planting a church every two years, every three years.
They've got maybe a church planting residency in their church where they're identifying guys and equipping them through a year long, two year process to get them prepared to go. And they're doing it regularly, they're doing it continually. They're continuing to identify, raise up and send out. They're partnering together with multiple churches. They're bringing other churches on board in their residency.
We've got several here in Arkansas and they are, they are reaching out to others that are saying, hey, we want to be a supporting church or partner church, how do we. They're helping engage those. So a multiplying church would be a church that is doing it multiple times over and over and over again, have systems in place to, to work through the entire process of identifying, equipping and sending out.
[00:20:05] Speaker D: And for the next level of engagement after multiplying.
[00:20:13] Speaker C: Let me just go back before multiplying, going from sending to multiplying. We do have another event. We've got one scheduled for August 11th and 12th here in Little Rock. We are hosting a residency builder for any pastor, any church that says, hey, we are interested in develop an intentional pipeline and intentional process for raising leaders up in our church to send out as church planters or even the principles are the same for raising up the next pastor or the next campus pastor or the next youth leader.
And this is a two day event. Okay, it's going to be Monday the 11th and Tuesday the 12th here in Little Rock. But it's how do you build a residency? How do you, how do you, what are you looking for? Inequalities? What are some of the things that you already have in place as a church that you can use to help develop these potential leaders and, and then walking them through that, through that process together. So we've got the ability online here at the ABC to connect churches to become supporting churches through praying and going and have those prayer cards that you mentioned. We have sending labs to help churches become more thinking about starting a church, being that sending church, and then the residency builder to help them become not more intentional, but intentional about doing it multiple times.
So you've got those three levels. Those are primarily the levels of churches that we have here. In Arkansas, there is another level where of churches and there's a few across the country that are considered movement churches, where they are doing all of, all of the above, all that we've just talked about and doing it exponentially, sending out four or five planters, pulling in multiple churches to come in and partner together in the sending process. And they're engaged in, not just in their own communities or their own states, but nationally and even internationally, churches that are leading the way and creating new avenues and new directions for church. Planting the movement church there.
[00:22:33] Speaker B: Awesome.
[00:22:34] Speaker C: That's great.
[00:22:34] Speaker B: So you have the five levels again, cooperating, supporting, sending, multiplying and then movement. And you know, again, we have a lot of churches that are giving to any or the cooperative program that are in that cooperating level that may be time for them to become a supporting church to take the next step in that. We'd love to connect you with Tim or some of our church planning strategists here at the convention just to see ways in which you could move along in the levels. And I think just as a reminder as well, why do we need church planning? Why do we need more churches?
50% of our state is unchurched.
That's over 1.5 million people.
If you take our churches 1350 plus, if everybody in Arkansas that was unchurched decided to come to church Sunday, that'd be 1100 people coming to every Arkansas Baptist church. We don't have enough for them. You know, you take it just half of those 1.5 million. Again, I mean, there's not enough churches and it's hard for a lot of folks to maybe see that in rural areas where there's churches on every corner. And I guess that's even in larger areas in our state. What's your response to that? Just a quick, I'll put you on the spot. Why do we need more churches, Tim?
[00:24:04] Speaker C: The population in Arkansas continues to grow.
Just a few years ago we had one SBC church for over 1700 and 80 something people.
I don't know the numbers across the entire state. I live in northwest Arkansas. In northwest Arkansas right Now, those that four county areas, we have one SPC church for every 5,700 people. And so the growth of the population and our lack of church planting in some of those areas has led to this big difference. I mean, you've got a city, you got a town of 5,000 people here in Arkansas. How many SBC churches do we have? How many churches do we have? We've got a bunch. We've got Two or three SBC churches. But there are places in the state. There's also the cold hard fact of some of our communities dying.
And with those churches are no longer able to to have a full time pastor. And so they're having a difficult time finding pastors, replanting and training up and helping start more bi vocational church plants are going to be a need, are in need and going to be in need all across the state.
Lostness drives us. The fact that people are dying, going to hell because they haven't heard the gospel. I was with one of our guys, one of our planters, a few weeks ago at a restaurant and he started to share the gospel with this guy he had never heard here in Arkansas. One of the waiters here in restaurants here in Arkansas had never heard John 3:16, didn't know anything about Jesus, had heard the name, but that was it. And to think that here in Arkansas we've got people who are living and working and moving and breathing neighbors in our own communities that haven't even heard the gospel one time drives us to plant more churches, to reach more people Statistically throughout history, throughout our time, the last 20 years here in Arkansas, church plants are more effective at reaching lost people. Baptizing, baptize more per capita, if I can put it that way, than established churches. Because there's a hunger, there's a drive.
[00:26:28] Speaker D: Yeah, give us the numbers with the celebration there in front of you.
This was from 2024 with data that was compiled from NAM with SIN Network Arkansas of the number of salvations and baptisms reported by our church plant.
[00:26:46] Speaker C: Yeah, we had 399 salvations reported in 2024. 201 of those followed through with baptism.
[00:26:55] Speaker D: Yeah, that's pretty awesome. And we're talking about 34 church planters and church planter apprentices that those numbers reflect.
That's incredible. That's another reason for planting more churches, that we have a greater opportunity to reach more people with the gospel.
[00:27:17] Speaker C: Amen.
[00:27:18] Speaker D: Now there's a huge event coming up. We want to give you a few minutes now, Tim, to let Arkansas Baptists know about this.
There's only a few of these happening across our nation.
This particular one's called Send Arkansas Day. The whole family for the whole mission, a Send Arkansas Day where we're going to talk about church planting and just pour into folks for an entire day. Anyone, all Arkansas Baptists are are invited. It's going to be September 5th at Guyer Springs First Baptist Church. I want you to mark that on your calendar, Tim. Let folks Know what they're going to experience when they come to this first ever Send Arkansas Day.
[00:28:11] Speaker C: Thank you.
That should get you there right there. Thank you, Dr. Sandberg.
[00:28:16] Speaker D: Come on.
[00:28:18] Speaker C: We are excited to host this. Through the years Send Network has done Send Network one day gatherings. This is an attempt for and spreading it out to smaller places like Arkansas as opposed to having to go to San Diego last year or Boston. We want to make sure that every church has an opportunity to gather together, to think about, to pray about, to talk about church planting.
We've got George Ross who is the Send Network regional leader for the Southern states coming in to encourage us in the area of encourage our planters, encourage us in the area of identifying guys and how to do that and to talk about sending, what it means to be a sending church. A good overview of church planting on that day.
We've got a cowboy band scheduled to be there to help us worship in, in cowboy style and looking forward to them.
We've got a number of breakouts for different needs or desires. We're going to talk about church. We've got a breakout related to replanting. What does it mean to adopt a church over down the road that's in need and how do we could we replant in that facilities? Could we help them start something new, something fresh there?
We've got a Hispanic breakout to help our Hispanic churches and others who are interested in Hispanic church planting. Think about residencies and developing pipelines to help multiply our Hispanic church ministry. We're looking at. We've got an event for our ladies. We've got some outreach ideas. We're looking at.
We've got a guy coming to help us think through all the internationals that are in our communities. How do we reach them and how do we start new works with them? Whether it be small groups or Sunday school classes or new, new new micro churches in the community with the different people groups that the Lord has among us. So lots of opportunity. It's a good overview of church planting. A good time to celebrate what God has already done to engage with some of those church planters. Most of our guys are going to be here that day to engage. To go from being a cooperating church to being a supporting church is meeting some of the faces where you could begin to build a relationship with them and maybe bring them into your church and encourage them be a supporting church. And we'll try to make that shift as well to be ascending God's vision for ascending church. So love for you to be a part of it. It's going to be a one day event, 10 to 33 in the afternoon. It's not a full day, but we tried to make it to where everybody in Arkansas could get here and not have to fight traffic and leave and not have to fight traffic. So very strategic in doing that.
[00:31:12] Speaker D: Hey, and I love the way that we've tagged this. The whole family for the whole mission, folks. It's going to take the whole family of the Arkansas Baptist State Convention for the whole mission of planting churches everywhere for everyone in the state of Arkansas. Come and learn about church planting.
Bring folks from your church. Don't just pastor, don't just come by yourself. Bring a team with you to sit through these workshops. You have six of them, right? Six different breakouts, six different breakouts on the workshops.
Come and bring five or six people with you so everyone can go.
You can have somebody, each one of those learning more about these different phases and involvement and engagement in church planting in our state.
So that's September 5th. Guyer Springs First Baptist Church from 10:00am to 3:00pm you can find the registration page. If you'll go to Abscond.
Go to the Missions team page there.
Scroll down just a little bit, click Church planting and when you go to that page goes toward the bottom of the page to the events and you'll see send Network Arkansas the whole family for the whole mission. If you'll click on that, it'll take you to the registration page and tell you a lot more about the event that's coming up, what we've got planned and you will be able to register.
Is there a cost to this?
[00:32:53] Speaker C: There is no cost.
[00:32:54] Speaker D: No cost. This is free.
[00:32:57] Speaker C: And for the first 200 registered and showing up, there is a T shirt, a send Network T shirt that will be awaiting you at the front door. Come on, swag.
[00:33:09] Speaker D: So let's Arkansas Baptist, let's get behind this, let's support this.
Let's discover with our churches how we can be involved in planting more churches within our state to reach more people with the gospel.
[00:33:22] Speaker B: Clint, I just want to say if you've listened to this point, your appetite is wet. For a little more about church planning, go back to one of our first two or three episodes and listen. I think it's on partnerships but listen to the story with Doug Enzer from Westside First Baptist Church in Greer's Ferry and Demetri Andrews from Faith Outreach in El Dorado and Waldo and the partnership that started with those two guys, the supporting and the sending and then even another church again started from the original work. And so just a great story.
You can see if there's a place for your church in church planting. So hope to see you September 5th at Guyer Springs First Baptist. The whole family for the whole mission. Thanks for listening and we will be back in two weeks.
[00:34:18] Speaker A: Thanks for joining the Missions guys today. If you liked what you heard, rate and review us on your favorite podcasting platform.
And to keep up with what is happening in Arkansas missions, visit absc.org missions.
