The Christian County Baptist Association in Hopkinsville, Kentucky, is partnering with the International Mission Board and a third-party organization on an initiative that has a goal of planting thousands of churches in South Asia.
The association will hold its annual meeting at Edgewood Baptist Church, and IMB missionary Mitch Engelhart (his pseudonym) and Bro. Vee, a church planter in South Asia, will tell their story of how God is working in that region of the world. “We will respond by showing our commitment to adopt church planters and then we will pray for each other,” said John Franklin, associational mission strategist.
‘Unique opportunity’
“God is on the move in this location, and there is a unique opportunity in this moment to reach people who walk in darkness to see a great light (Jesus),” Franklin added. “We as an association are seeking to join God in His work and the opportunity before is an unusual partnership.
“Mitch has a passion in teaching and making disciples who make disciples, and churches who plant churches who then plant churches. His intersection with Bro. Vee’s life in 2018 has greatly multiplied the number of churches being planted.”
Also, Franklin said the IMB is resourcing them with software that allows them to track, communicate and strategize with reaching the nation where they are located.
“We have the opportunity to partner with brothers and sisters around the world. God is doing stuff, people are coming the Christ and they are willing to pay the price,” Mitch said.
He tells of a church planter who entered a village but was told to leave by a local resident. When the planter refused, his leg was broken. He recovered and then returned to the same village on his bicycle, and people there broke his other leg. “That kept him from doing anything,” said Mitch — at least for a while. Network partnerships responded to buy him a motor bike, “so he now goes more places than ever before. Those are the people we are trying to engage. We want to give the nations as an inheritance to Jesus,” Mitch said.
Mitch and his family have been on the mission field since 2004, and he says South Asia “is a harvest field. It is time to bring in the harvest — areas that were not receptive now are receptive. People are interested and there is spiritual openness in many countries.”
Church planter commitments
The Christian County Association has commitments to fund 165 church planters, which would hopefully result in 5,000 churches being planted in the next 10 years. Franklin said the goal is to have churches adopt enough church planters that as many as 10,000 churches can be planted in the next 10 years. Thus far one of the churches in the association has adopted 50 church planters, another church adopted 20 and a church that normally runs 17 people in worship has adopted five church planters — all in an effort to take the gospel to unreached people groups.
The IMB defines a people group as unreached when less than 2% of its population is evangelical Christian. A people group is unengaged when no evangelical church-planting strategy is being implemented among them.
The IMB has identified 3,150 people groups that remain unreached and unengaged. Of the 3,150 unengaged unreached people groups, less than 400 have populations exceeding 100,000.
Franklin said he is hopeful that the partnership model of the association can be mirrored by other associations in the U.S. in working with indigenous church planters.
EDITOR’S NOTE — This story was written by Chip Hutcheson and originally published by Kentucky Today.
