Chad Mize and Jonathan Chapman are doing their part to ensure that the circle remains unbroken.
Mize, associate pastor of missions and mobilization at Forest Hills Baptist Church of Franklin, Tennessee, and Chapman, collegiate ministry specialist at East Tennessee State University, are both passionate and committed to helping aspiring church leaders find reliable and godly “ministry mentors.”
Eventually, if all goes according to plan, those same students will then help others follow that path.
It’s a cycle of events that is crucial to the future of student ministry, said Chapman. With the pipeline of rising ministry leaders slowing almost to a trickle in recent years, this is a vital time for new leaders to emerge.
Chapman said Tennessee Baptists can aid the process, and infuse the cycle, by supporting the BCMs in Tennessee, both with prayer and financial resources.
“As Tennessee Baptists give through the Cooperative Program and the Golden Offering for Tennessee Missions, they make it possible for BCMs to disciple students and also to send them back out as leaders into the local churches here in Tennessee — and also around the world,” Chapman noted.
Story in action
Mize and Chapman recently watched “the circle of (ministry) life” unfold in front of them.
The story starts when Cole Rogers, now the collegiate ministry specialist at Belmont, was serving on staff at Forest Hills.
“While I was interning in the student ministry at Forest Hills (Baptist Church), I began to have conversations with Chad about what would it look like for me to go into ministry,” Rogers said. “I felt like God was pulling me in that direction, but I didn’t really know what that would look like.”
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EDITOR’S NOTE — This story was written by David Dawson and originally published by Baptist and Reflector.
