So much has changed since last year’s (Annual) meeting.  John asked me if I would consider taking on the job of Church Planting Strategist for Catalina Baptist Association and so here I am.  My assignment so far has been to meet with established church pastors to gather their input on church planting; the process; and to see if there was any interest in their church being involved in planting.  I have met with many of our pastors and am pleased to report the results so far.  The following are three things that have continued to be brought up in these meetings:

• Established churches wish to be informed of what is going on in the church planting area.   Pastors would like to know when churches are being planned in their areas.  They would also like to be kept up to date on church planting as a whole.
• Church planting needs to be in partnerships.  Recently (last several years) we have seen many of our plants fail.  Many of our pastors wonder if some of this is because our planters feel alone, or perhaps they do not have enough resources.  They feel that there would more support, encouragement and security within a partnership of several churches.
• Every pastor I met with said that their church would be interested in being in a partnership to plant new churches.  Most said that they would probably be unable to “mother” a church on their own, because of a lack of resources, but a partnership would be ideal.

These responses have been incredibly encouraging and quite honestly unexpected.  It is a great thing to know that the churches of Catalina Baptist Association want to be a part of planting new churches.  We are not just about our “castles”, but about the “KINGDOM”.  Awesome!  The next step is that, along with the “New Work” team, John and I will be fleshing out an exciting new strategy on how to best reach this region we live in with new churches.  Here are a few highlights to get you excited:

• We dream of partnerships of 4 or 5 churches that are in close proximity of each other joining together to pray for an area; select an area; bring in a planter; and support a new work.
• We dream of many different ethnicities to be represented in new church plants.
• We dream of our whole region (not just Tucson) having new churches.
• We dream of all our established churches being involved somehow in a partnership to plant new churches.

Let me share with you two new churches that have been planted this year:

Ben Barfield

Church Planting Strategist

Comments are closed.