DACULA, Ga. — More than 800 people, representing 91 churches, attended the latest SPARK conference, held at Hebron Baptist Church in Dacula. Including the almost 750 from 94 churches that gathered at Sherwood Baptist in Albany the previous weekend, it brings the total number of people that have attended SPARK this year to more than 2,900 from 368 churches.
With two SPARK sessions left to go in 2025, one in Atlanta on Sept. 21, and the final conference in Greensboro, Ga, on Sept. 28, total attendance is expected to easily surpass last year’s totals of around 3,600 participants representing 385 churches.
“We are on track to exceed 4,000 leaders trained to make disciples,” said Scott Sullivan, the Georgia Baptist Mission Board’s discipleship catalyst. “The genius of SPARK is that the GBMB, associations, and the local churches are each doing what they do well. “
He explained that, “The GBMB provides the training, central command for coordination, and high-level promotion. The local church runs local logistics and speaks into breakouts and keynote development. The association rallies the support of the association and region. The convergence of those three groups is an unstoppable force for advancing the gospel.”
At Sherwood, keynote speaker Mark Clifton, who serves as Senior Director of Replanting at the North American Mission Board, reminded SPARK attendees that the SBC is “the denomination of normative-sized churches.” Clifton noted that nearly nine in ten congregations worship with fewer than 200 on a Sunday. “They’re not small. You’re not small. You’re normal size.” The good news, he said, is that “God has always done some amazing things in small ways, with small resources.”
Clifton insisted every congregation has a future because “Jesus has a plan for every single one of those churches.” But God funds His plans, not ours. The first posture of renewal, he said, is remembering, “It’s not your church.”
Preaching from Luke 10, Clifton contrasted the priest and Levite with the Good Samaritan and said the missing ingredient in many churches isn’t Bible knowledge but compassion: “Which of these three do you think proved to be a neighbor? The one who showed mercy. Go, and do likewise.” Jesus warned against resenting changing communities and urged leaders to love their neighbors as they are, not as we wish them to be.
Clifton outlined a simple, repeatable pathway for mission: “bending” (humbling ourselves to meet people where they live), “tending” (touching real hurts), “mending” (staying with people long enough to help them heal), “spending” and “lending” (sacrificial generosity for gospel work), and finally “sending.” In short, ministry will be costly and messy, but compassion moves us toward people anyway.
Above all, he called pastors to “never lose heart in the gospel… proclaim it in all of its purity.” If churches will love their communities and share the good news with open hands and open hearts, Clifton said, “Jesus has a plan for every church.”
The keynote speaker at Hebron, Bryant Wright, who served as the founding pastor of Johnson Ferry Baptist Church for 38 years and later as president of Send Relief, anchored his message in 1 Corinthians 9, reminding leaders that the call to share Christ is not optional but urgent. “Woe is me,” he quoted the Apostle Paul, “if I do not preach the gospel.” He added that the calling to follow Jesus is the highest calling in life and one that involves everyone in the room. “And even though you may not stand in a pulpit like I'm doing right now, the call to preach is a call to go and tell, to share the good news of the gospel."
Wright clarified the gospel with crisp simplicity: “The gospel is Christ died for our sins and Christ rose from the dead.” Jesus’ death satisfies God’s judgment for sin, and His resurrection offers new life now and forever. In a culture overwhelmed with bad news, Wright said, believers carry the best news imaginable and must go and tell it.
Wright sketched four groups that believers will regularly meet: the religious (including cultural Christians sitting in our pews), the moralists (passionate about values or ideology), the irreligious (those simply living as they please), and the weak (morally, emotionally, or physically). The task, he said, is to set aside personal preferences, show respect, ask good questions, find common ground, and share both a clear gospel and a clear personal testimony of the difference Christ has made in your life.
Wright pressed churches to train their people to share the gospel, noting how evangelism training for mission teams at his church multiplied witnesses back home. And he closed with a sober warning from the same chapter: don’t undermine your witness. Like disciplined athletes, Christian leaders must guard their walk with daily time with God, Spirit-led living, healthy boundaries, care for family, and personal integrity.
At each venue, participants were able to choose from a wide array of breakout sessions. Attendees could hear experts on discipleship, evangelism, missions, worship and music, ministry to kids, teens, and young adults, and more.
The Hebron event also included breakouts in Spanish for Hispanic church leaders to be encouraged and edified in their native language.
“The quality of the breakouts may be the best we have ever seen,” Sullivan said. “And, to be clear, those titles are developed through comments and evaluations from local churches letting us know what they need.”
What excites Sullivan the most about SPARK, he said, is ”the energy growing within churches to equip lay leaders to advance the gospel."
Mark Marshall, the GBMB’s senior lead strategist for church strengthening, gives credit to the Lord for the success of the conferences thus far. “SPARK has been one of the events God is using to bring unity to our churches for the mission of making disciples across Georgia. It is exciting to see what God is doing.“
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Registration is currently open for the remaining 2025 SPARK conferences at https://www.thesparkconference.com/.
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