TIFTON, Ga. — The final round of 2026 Engage 6 gatherings concluded this week, closing a year in which 1,641 pastors and church leaders attended 36 evangelism training sessions across six regions of Georgia.
At Eastside Baptist Church in Tifton, 30 people gathered Wednesday to hear Ken Bevel, connections and local missions pastor at Sherwood Baptist Church in Albany, teach on evangelistic prayer.
“There is nothing that you can do that should not start in prayer,” Bevel told the group. “You’ve gotta start in prayer.”
Steve Foster, evangelism catalyst for the Georgia Baptist Mission Board, said Engage 6 speakers were already putting the principles they taught into practice in their churches.
“Everyone we’ve asked to lead an Engage 6 equipping session is someone who is a practitioner,” Foster said. “In other words, we looked and thought, who’s actually doing this in their church?”
When it came to evangelistic prayer, Foster said Bevel was one of the first people who came to mind. Bevel taught the session in all six regions during the final round of Engage 6.
Bevel, who also appeared in the Sherwood Pictures films “Fireproof” and “Courageous,” said churches can gradually lose their evangelistic focus as the demands of ministry pile up.
Pastors begin ministry eager to reach their communities, he said, but weddings, funerals, hospital visits, and the needs of church members can consume more and more of their time.
“Slowly, the mission starts to fade away,” Bevel said. “How do we regain that heart? Well, it’s not a methodology. It’s through prayer.”
In Albany, Bevel said, prayer has led the church into some of the city’s most troubled neighborhoods.
Years ago, he asked the city’s police chief where the greatest concentrations of crime were located. After looking at a crime heat map, Bevel decided that those were places where the church needed to go.
Bevel and a friend began taking leftover meals from Sherwood’s Wednesday night activities into one of those areas. The first week, about 15 people said they had not eaten that day. The next week, more were waiting.
On subsequent visits, Bevel began asking whether people wanted prayer and whether they wanted to hear the gospel.
“How many people are hungry? Every hand shot up,” Bevel recalled. “How many people want prayer? Every hand shot up. How many people want to hear the gospel? Every hand shot up.”
Bevel said people were saved, baptized, and discipled as the church continued returning to the community.
Sherwood continued working in the neighborhoods through prayer walks, cleanup projects, children’s activities, and relationships with families there.
Bevel defined evangelistic prayer as “interceding for those who have not yet accepted Jesus Christ as their own Savior.” He encouraged churches to include lost people by name on their prayer lists, ask God where He wants them to serve, go into those places to pray, and then look for opportunities to share the gospel.
Bevel compared discipleship to his 20 years in the Marine Corps. Boot camp prepared Marines for what they would face outside the training environment.
“The boot camp was never meant for me to stay inside,” he said. “It was to train me to go out and fight battles. The problem with the church is we like boot camp.”
Bevel said churches should strive to reach both their immediate communities and people around the world. “It’s not either-or. It’s both," he said. "We need to be able to reach the guy across the street, but at the same time be able to impact the world.”
Eastside Pastor Keith Norris said his church already prays faithfully, but most of those prayers are for fellow church members. “That’s an important part of praying,” he said. “But we need to pray for lost people too.”
Norris said he hopes church members will begin praying for lost people by name and asking God to prepare their hearts to hear the gospel.
“Right here in Tifton, in South Georgia, which is a very conservative area, there’s so much lostness,” he said.
Jim Pitt, pastor of Morven Baptist Church, drove about 45 miles to attend the session.
“Prayer is important, because it all starts with prayer,” Pitt said.
Pitt described Morven as a rural farming community with an older population, but said he sees people who drifted away from church beginning to search again.
“They’re looking for truth more than anything else,” he said.
The Tifton meeting was one of six held during the final October round of Engage 6. The series included six rounds of gatherings in January, February, April, May, August, and October.
Foster said the value of the sessions comes when pastors and church leaders put what they learn into practice. He compared the sessions to a gym membership, saying the training is only useful if pastors and church leaders apply what they learn.
“Prayer works everywhere,” Foster said. “It’s just a biblical principle.”
Foster said pastors increasingly call or text him asking for prayer before witnessing opportunities or telling him about people their churches have baptized.
“The response to Engage 6 was encouraging,” Foster said. “Pastors and church leaders told us these sessions added value to their ministry and helped them build an evangelism strategy. The principles taught will work in churches of any size. In 2027, we’re coming back with Personal Evangelism, Event Evangelism, and The Sunday Morning Experience, in new locations across all six regions of our state.”
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