ATLANTA — The inspiration service that opened the Georgia Baptist Convention annual meeting on Sunday at First Baptist Atlanta also became a sending service, as state leaders brought a group of new church planters to the platform and asked Georgia Baptists to pray for them, support them, and see them as “answers to prayer” for the state’s growing mission field.
Georgia Baptist Mission Board Executive Director Thomas Hammond told messengers that reaching the 7 million unreached people in Georgia will require more churches, especially as population growth turns farmland into subdivisions and shopping centers. “We need churches in all 159 counties,” he said, adding that Cooperative Program giving is helping fund an aggressive church planting strategy.
Hammond then introduced Ryan McCammack, who leads Send Network Georgia, the partnership between Georgia Baptists and the North American Mission Board to plant more churches across the state. McCammack said the partnership is already bearing fruit. Right now, he said, Georgia has about 80 church plants five years old or younger. On a typical Sunday, about 6,000 people worship in those congregations, and this year those churches have baptized some 500 people.
“My heart burns for church planting,” McCammack said, going back to the day when church planters knocked on his parents’ door and invited them to a church plant. McCammack was saved at that church, and he wants to see that repeated “over and over” in Georgia. He pointed to Jesus’ words in Luke 10 about the harvest being plentiful and the need to pray for laborers.
After being called to the stage by McCammack, the planters came forward to share their names and where they are starting new churches.
Hammond said they were invited not only so Georgia Baptists could pray for them, but also so the planters could see the congregations that make their ministries possible through Cooperative Program giving.
Among the church planters present at the commissioning were:
Danny Abell, Reliant Church, Temple
Bharat Raaya, First Revival Church, Cumming
Steven Johnson, Vessels of Life Church, Snellville
Soulouque Dorisme, Open Door Tabernacle, Hoschton
Abner Ruiz, Comunidad de Fe, Marietta
Kyle Farmer, Lux Fellowship, Rock Spring
Stephan Cobbert, Genesis Community Church, Hapeville
Brian Brock, The Gathering Church, Monroe
Joseph Leach, 1025 Church Statham, Statham
Adam Bishop, The Parish Church, Marietta
Robert Suh, New Wave Korean Baptist Church, Buford
Hong Chul Kim, UpDream Church, Inc., Suwanee
Carlos Guevara, Somos Eclesia, Buford
Ben Presten, Christ Church, Johns Creek
Benjamin Moore, Salem Bilingual, Dalton
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Video of the sessions and presentations during the annual meeting is avail
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