Church Planting Report

Nov 2020 – Oct 2021

In light of the pandemic, the NWBC Church Planting Team received instructions to focus primarily on the well-being of the church planters that we previously had. The team did this well. Because of the increased Soul Care emphasis, we expected fewer church plants to emerge in the past year. However, God had other plans. 29 new congregations (new churches, rePlants and campuses) representing five languages (Korean, Swahili, Mandarin, Spanish, English) and multiple affinity groups (multi-ethnic, urban, suburban, rural, collegiate, cowboy) have begun their planting journey in the past year. God really does give the increase.

NWBC Commitment to Church Planting

The Northwest Baptist Convention’s commitment to church planting has never been higher. This commitment is not only demonstrated by the large number of new congregations, but by the significant NWBC financial resources being committed to this mission. In addition to maintaining our full Church Planting Team personnel group with 100% NWBC funding after the departure of our primary SBC domestic missions partner, the Northwest Baptist Convention and its churches are stepping up their commitment to support church plants and planters in the following ways:

• $60,000 in NWBC budget funds to support church planters and plants.
• An additional $100,000 of non-budget church planting funds from gifts through the Mission Northwest fund and investment funds.
• Access alongside our established churches to $100,000 in evangelism grants via NWBC’s Evangelism & Church Health Team.
• Approximately $400,000 given by NW churches to support the church planting efforts via our North American agency.

New Northwest Congregations

Region 1

Jaewon Choi | Seattle Overflowing Church [Lynnwood, WA] 2/1/2021

David (Sung Eun) Lee | Puyallup Korean Baptist Church [Puyallup, WA] 3/1/2021

Patrick Mugwanja | Christ Redeemed Church [Tacoma, WA] 7/1/2021

Tyler Clark | Table of Hope Community Church [Puyallup, WA] 7/1/2021

Al Del Vecchio | Farm & Family Missions Church [Bow, WA] 7/1/2021

Lei (Levi) Zhang | Bless the Chinese Baptist Church [Issaquah, WA] 7/1/2021

Rich Hutchins | Stilly Valley Church [Stanwood, WA] 7/1/2021

George Mungai | Neema Community Church [Everett, WA] 7/15/2021

Carlos Rios | Hispanic congregation [Bellingham, WA] 2021

Jacob Dahl Resonate | UW [Seattle, WA] 6/2021

                  Will have two campuses, one focused on college students & one focused on “townies.”

Jose Flores | Hispanic congregation [Lummi, WA]

Timothy Moore | Impact Multiplied [Mt Vernon, WA]

Bob Bennett & Larry Prentice | Impact Multiplied (campus) - Chicken Coop Ministries [Burlington, WA]

Rick Nowlin | C4 - Puyallup [Puyallup, WA]

Region 2

Jay Chambers | Chehalis Valley Fellowship [Elma, WA] Fall 2020

Region 3

Daniel Estrada (team) | El Buen Pastor – Vancouver Campus [Vancouver, WA] 1/2021

Jason Page | Maker’s Church NW [Vancouver, WA] 6/1/2021

Dustin Payne | Go Church PDX [Portland, OR]

Nelson Castro | Point of Encounter Portland [Hillsboro, OR] 7/1/2021

Region 4

Scott Stewart | FBC Toledo [Toledo, OR] 11/1/2021

Jeff Dankenbring | Freedom Hill Baptist Church [Sweet Home, OR] 2/1/2021

Colin Luoma | Resonate OSU [Corvallis, OR] 2021

Point of Encounter [Woodburn, OR] – started by Nelson Castro; transitioned to another planter

Region 5

Jimmy Cruz | Emmanuel Baptist Church (Hispanic)

             [3 Plants: Pasco, Yakima, & Pullman, WA] 4/2021

Eric Diaz | Abide Church [Pasco, WA] 6/1/2021

Stephen Ward | Resonate [Spokane, WA] 2021

Northwest Baptist Convention Church Planting Highlights

• NWBC hosted the annual Church Planting Retreat in April 2021. More than two hundred participants. Focus was on Soul Care.
• NWBC hosted 2 Soul Care Tours throughout the Northwest, a spring tour with Joe Chambers and Jeremy Frye and a fall tour with Greg Pickering (Brazos Pointe Fellowship, Lake Jackson, TX).
• NWBC continues to develop our partnership with Texas Baptists (BGCT), including preparation for multiple vision tours in 2022. Texas Baptists are creating a series of videos featuring some NWBC church plants.
• NWBC Women’s Ministry under the strong leadership of Nancy Hall continues to expand the Adopt a Church Planter initiative. 
• We have multiple potential planters in varying processes of application, assessment, and preparation to plant churches throughout the five regions.
• More than one hundred church plants and churches are having their finances professionally managed between the services of the Church Network Hub (directed by Jeanette Fanai) and the NWBC administrative services (directed by Pamela Brock).
• The Church Planting team has had staffing changes this past year.
  rightarrow In Region 5, with the retirement of Garry Benfield in summer 2020 we briefly gained the help of Dwight Huffman serve as Church Planting and Church Health & Evangelism catalyst, and now Kent Staton is off and running in that role. Welcome, Kent!
  rightarrow In Region 4, Ron Allen has transitioned from our catalyst team to serve on NAMB’s rePlant team. Rob Walker is taking on the combined role of Church Planting and Church Health & Evangelism catalyst for the region.
• Natalie Hammond celebrated 20 years in February as the Church Planting Administrator, first for the Seattle area, and then for the whole Northwest.

Regional Highlights from Our Catalysts

Region 1 – Tim Howe

God has continued to work in amazing ways during an exceedingly difficult year. Despite trials and hardships, multiple churches have been catalyzed this past year. Two Bridges Church (Pastor David Ginn), Discovery Church in Seattle (Pastor Kevin Gibbs), and C4 Heritage Ranch (Pastor Roy Swihart) all began meeting publicly in 2020. In addition, multiple new church plants launched within weeks of each other this past spring.

• Two new church plants are reaching the Swahili populations in their cities:
• Redemption Church in Tacoma, led by Pastor Patrick Mugwanja, and Neema Community Church in Everett, led by pastor George Mungai.
• Impact Multiplied (Pastor Timothy Moore) launched as a church in May. Since then, they have continued to grow, adding new worship services, small groups, and two new church plants – Stilly Valley Church in Stanwood with Ritchie Hutchins as pastor, and Farm and Family Mission Church in Bow with Al Del Vecchio as pastor.
• Tyler Clark launched Table of Hope Community Church in Puyallup during the Spring.
• Lei Zhang is focusing on a Chinese church plant in partnership with Jonah Easley at Awakening Church in Bellevue.
• Bread of Life International Fellowship in Kent has started a new work to create a new campus in Tacoma in 2022.

Region 2/3 – Phil Peters

• Chehalis Valley Fellowship - Pastor Jay Chambers began this work in the fall of 2020. They have recently begun meeting in a local Grange Hall to facilitate meeting on Sunday mornings. They have baptized two people this fall.
• Go Iglesia - Martin Leyva leads this work in Woodland, Washington. They had a community block party in partnership with four churches and over one hundred in attendance in July 2021. They meet Sunday afternoons in Woodland. Pastor Leyva‘s family has experienced many personal hardships in the months that they have been working, yet the core group is developing and growing.
• Resilient Hope Fellowship - Pastor John Schmidt moved to the McMinnville area in spring of 2020 to establish a New Testament church. The Covid realities presented great challenges as they engaged a new community. However, Pastor John has made headway in the nonprofit community and has become a resource to local churches. They launched their first public meetings with Bible study in a coffee shop in September 2021.
• Go Church recently had a high attendance of 150 people. They are multiplying leaders, small groups, and churches and have baptized many new believers. Currently, Go Church is the sending church for three other church plants.

Region 3 – Wes Hughes

• Redemption Church, Pastor Vergil Brown, launched last September. Vergil and Kelsey are gifted leaders from the NW with a heart for the NW. They have planted Redemption Church in the NE quadrant of Portland. Redemption was gifted a building in the Cully neighborhood just a few months after it launched. Redemption Church hosted multiple outreach events in the park this summer.
• Ricardo and Menya Barber worked with Pastor Frazier to successfully merged One H.O.P.E. with Genesis Fellowship in January, which also provided One H.O.P.E. with a building. The church has many significant ministries and community partnerships. The most unique ministry is an Urban Flights program, training young people to be future airline pilots! Ricardo is a CoVocational church planter, using his platform teaching in a community school to build relationships and trust.
• Marcus Shambry has been leading Project Truth for over 5 years, while raising his three boys as a single father. Another small congregation merged with Project Truth this past year. Marcus did an excellent job leading his congregation during COVID. Historically, this church has had a strong record of seeing people come to faith, even during the lockdown. Marcus also formed a Leadership Think Tank of young which successfully launched an online church of Project Truth.
• Ryan and Clarissa Sidhom have been faithfully planting River City Church for the past several years in Vancouver WA, partnering with over 40+ community and providing over 10,000 volunteer hours. They also welcomed a new associate pastor to help continue the church’s witness to the Latino community. Ryan also became an author and published a book called CURIOUS.
• Jason and Meagan Page are planting Makers Church NW in East Vancouver, with a desire for MCNW to be a multiplying Church. Their first preview service had more than seventy attenders. Their goal is to launch in the spring.
• Dustin and Dawn Payne had a calling to come to Portland several years ago after college. With a burden to reach their family and friends; however, they stayed in Houston to plant a church. As of this summer, the Paynes are preparing to plant Go Church PDX in SE Portland in partnership with their Sending Church Go Church Ridgefield.
• Dung Nguyen hopes to plant Dream Baptist Church in Portland this year through the Vietnamese Baptist Network, under the leadership of Pastor Nhut Nguyen. Pastor Dung was facing persecution in Vietnam for helping those in the underground church, and for the safety of his family moved to Vancouver a couple of years ago.
• There are also transitions in our region
  • Chris Snodgrass became Remedy City’s 2nd pastor after Josh Carter moved to Las Vegas to become a church planting catalyst.
  • Executive Pastor Caleb Iorg is leading Garden Church (Portland) through a transition and pastor search, following the departure of founding pastor Aaron Bennett, who returned to Georgia with his family.
  Please be in prayer for both congregations.

Thank you, Northwest Baptist churches, for your sacrificial giving and support for seeing new disciples made and new churches started in Region 3. I am grateful for your trust to help catalyze new churches in the Portland metro area with the most NONES (non-religious affiliation) of any city in North America at 42% (San Francisco and Seattle 33%).

Region 4 - Ron Allen

• Three pastors have been installed in rePlant churches that this year in Oregon - Toledo, Dexter, and Sweet Home.
• A new Hispanic work started in Woodburn this year. The original planter handed the work over to Adrian in Boris Alfaro's church planting network and has since started a second work in Hillsboro.
• RePlanters hosted the 2nd annual rePlant workshop (July 2021) through the Oregon Mission Coalition rePlant Network. Attendance was almost triple from the year before. Since the conference, two more churches have engaged in the rePlant process: Yachats and Drain, Oregon.
• A regional cohort formed to equip Intentional Interims just for rePlant churches, in addition to a regional cohort for church planting training. Two out of the seven rePlant Residencies in the Send Network are located here in Oregon now.
• A couple from Rogue River, Oregon is starting the church planting application and assessment process through NAMB.
• We are also exegeting the community of Oakridge, where we once had a church, to see about using the existing property to start a new congregation.

Region 5 – Kent Staton / Phil Peters

• Two-year-old Abide Church in Pasco, led by the Diaz brothers, began a funding relationship with NAMB this year. Their primary target is the collegiate and academic/faculty community of Lower Columbia Basin Community College. Quinault Baptist Church is the sending church.
• Our NWBC team is working with Inland Empire Director of Missions Dan Brandel and local pastors to determine what churches are need in northern Idaho and the greater Spokane area. Significant population growth is happening especially in and around Coeur d'Alene, Idaho.

Hispanic Church Planting - Ivan Montenegro

• This past year was primarily a year of training and preparing new leaders, and now we are early in the process of beginning to deploy these new pastors. Several have quit their secular jobs in preparation for deployment.
• Jimmy Cruz was deployed to Tri-Cities in April and launched 3 new church plants – Pasco, Yakima and Pullman.
• Starting the groundwork for 3 new plants in Oregon and 3 in the Tri-Cities area in the coming year.
• Multiple leaders are currently attending the Biblical Institute in Bellingham, and plans are in the works to launch a second Biblical Institute in Pasco, Washington.

Final Thoughts

Leading a church during Covid is an incredibly difficult challenge. Starting a church from scratch during a pandemic seems even more difficult. We praise God emphatically for His blessings. We also celebrate the church planters and their families, the partners, and our Church Planting Team who have served in such amazing ways through this season. Thank you and Praise God!

Please be in fervent prayer for our church planters and their teams. Many are wrestling with decisions about whether to continue. Covid has taken its toll. They need your prayers, our continued support, and most of all, God’s presence and leading. Thank you.

Gary Irby, NWBC Church Planting Director

What once started as a DVD of thousands of resources has now gone virtual! Think of this resource as a filing cabinet.  Say I need some ideas for "Outreach"...I would head to my "DVD" and check out files that have outreach materials.  Etc. etc.  Happy browsing!

Church Planting Resource DVD 

This video gives some dos and don'ts to help mission teams be more effective - both in the Northwest and anywhere they might decide to go!

Steve Stroope explains how to find the resources to be a partner.