by Wayne Guinn
The NCPO is not only helping start brand new churches, but it is also helping to rebirth languishing churches. We believe this is an important work too. It was exciting for the NCPO to partner with the Iowa Baptist Bible Fellowship, Heartland Baptist Church of Ames, IA, and Bethel Baptist Church of Carroll, IA, to see a ministry reverse a decline and begin to grow again.
On August 29, 2010, Bethel Baptist Church of Carroll, IA, held a special charter service, adopted new foundational documents, and called Mike Salati Sr. as pastor.
Bethel had been in decline for five years. Pastor Randy Abell (Heartland Baptist Church of Ames, IA) and the Iowa BBF, not wanting to see a church closed and sold, began to pray and to work on behalf of the church. They met with Wayne Guinn and Jason Todd of the National Church Planting Office, with whom Abell had worked in the past, and hammered out a template for the future. The church would remain open under the stewardship of Pastor Abell, and work would begin to salvage and guide the faithful to ascertain if a work for God would continue in Carroll.
Mike Salati began as interim pastor in late February 2010, and he began regrouping the congregation with the financial backing of the Iowa BBF. God began to bless immediately as a core group quickly formed around the normal Sunday school, morning, and afternoon services. By the end of August, when the charter service was held, attendance was averaging about 25, the past-due bills were paid off, and the congregation was poised to move forward.
In late January 2011, the church held its first annual business meeting. God has continued to direct and bless, and a calendar has been laid out for the next year. Plans include an evangelistic outreach for spring, a vacation Bible school for summer, and the continuation of regular congregational fellowship meals between Sunday services. The church has elected its first officers and it also adopted its first annual budget plan, including partial support of two local missionaries from the Carroll area. Already God is using Bethel to bring the gospel to the uttermost parts of the earth!
None of this would have been possible without the pastors of the Iowa BBF and the NCPO representatives working together to further God’s work in God’s time. As Scripture says, “Being confident of this very thing, that He which hath begun a good thing in you, will perform it until the day of Jesus Christ” (Philippians 1:6).