The BBFI is a church planting story
by John Gross, APEX Director
I grew up in a little West Texas town called Phillips in the heart of the panhandle of Texas. Phillips had only one blinking red light, a Phillips gas station, a post office, and a general store. But … we had our 3A high school, the Fighting Blackhawks, the pride and joy of the community.
Phillips gets its name from its founder, Frank Phillips, who was the owner and president of Phillips Petroleum Company. This area was a giant oil field. At its zenith, Phillips was the largest inland oil and gas refinery in the nation. The company built over 700 homes to provide housing for the employees. These houses were approximately 700 square feet of living space each with the same floor plan and yard size. It was a Mecca in the 1940s and 50s for hard working oil field hands known as roughnecks. Some say there were 3,000 to 4,000 men employed by Phillips in this West Texas oil field. The oil boom in the late 30s and 40s brought these men and their families by the droves into this area looking for work to provide a living for their families.
About five miles south of Phillips is another small town, Borger. Observing the large population growth in Phillips and Borger in such a short period of time, Scotty Alexander received a burden and a call of God to plant Fellowship Baptist Church in Borger. Following Alexander as pastor of the church was Pastor McDowell, and later my pastor, Bill Ferking.
In 1950, Ferking announced Fellowship Baptist Church of Borger would join with Baptist Bible Fellowship International to support the cause of missions at home and abroad. Since that time, many young people from the church have attended Baptist Bible College and entered fulltime ministry. Fellowship Baptist has supported many church plants, colleges, and missionaries in the past 66 years.
This story can be told many times over as we review the history of church planting in the Baptist Bible Fellowship — it has always been a church planting movement. Beginning with approximately 100 churches in 1950, the Baptist Bible Fellowship has grown to several thousand affiliated churches in the United States and over 18,000 foreign missionary churches — all this without an organized funding of planters other than the voluntary giving of the sending church and the local and state fellowships. Amazing! The Baptist Bible Fellowship colleges and affiliates are responsible for infusing in their students a church planting spirit, teaching the local church responsibility of going and making disciples, baptizing and teaching them to go and do likewise.
It wasn’t until 1999 that the Baptist Bible Fellowship under the leadership of Kenneth Gillming established the Judea Samaria Project to encourage and supply funding for church planters. In 2004, it transitioned to the National Church Planting Office (NCPO). The NCPO was renamed APEX in February 2015 with the focus of encouraging church planters on a local, state, regional, and national scale.
When we examine the successes of our Fellowship church planters, we are amazed. It is impossible to name them all. We have never had the resources, technology, education, tools, communication skills, and organization we have today. The possibilities are limitless. We stand on the shoulders of many great successful church planters and we need to thank the Lord every day for their sacrifices and faith and for the opportunities they provided through the years.
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How the BBFI helps church planters
by Dan Greer, BBFI 3rd Vice President
I recently attended a breakfast where Rafael Cruz spoke to about 50 pastors in my area. In his message he said if there is any hope for America it will not come from politicians — but from pastors. He proclaimed “… there is a responsibility to the pastor to bring the light of the Gospel the light of the truth of God to a world in darkness.” I agree there is a need for pastors to preach “the light of the Gospel … to a world in darkness,” but there is also a need for pastors to lead their congregations to multiply themselves by planting more churches. Church planting has been a BBFI staple from its inception — emanating from the “Rawlings Revival Days” of yesteryear to modern assessment, training, and coaching agencies of today.
When you Google “Church Planting” you get approximately 934,000 hits, including agencies offering a variety of services to would-be planters that rivals corporate marketing of our day. One can purchase these services for only “seven easy payments of $349” or for six to ten percent of total offerings. The unique thing about BBFI church planting is there is no denominational fee or percentage requirement of the planter’s offerings. To be approved by the BBFI APEX national committee, a planter must first be recommended by a sending church pastor and then by two additional affiliate pastors, complete the application, be cleared by an assessment agency, agree with the 20 Articles of Faith of the BBFI, attend BBFI local, state, or national meetings, and support BBFI projects. Once approved by the national committee, the church planter is placed on the website, invited to BBFI sponsored training events, and promoted among local, state, and area fellowships for financial support.
For more information about becoming an APEX church planter, contact John Gross, Director of APEX, at cpjohngross@icloud.com or (832) 748-8528.