From the Field - September 2024

Immanuel Baptist Church has returned to the first century in our approach to reaching the world for Christ. More than 20 years ago, we began to examine the methodologies of the early expansion of the Kingdom of our Lord and found that His primary tool was local churches. Seeing the successes of this methodology, our fellowship applied them and has become a catalyst and a chief sustaining influence in three church planting movements in three nations on the other side of the world.  Although persecution has followed in many areas and the problems those churches face are often life-threatening, the total number of new local churches in those networks has grown from zero to more than 30,000 congregations.

When this work began, I was a trustee on the International Mission Board (IMB).  As chairman of the board in 2006, I asked our president, Dr. Rankin, and our regional leaders from around the world what it would take to place enough missionaries on the field to provide enough training to facilitate church planting movements in every significant population zone. After three months of study, they reported it would take more than 8,000 teaching missionaries. When the financial crash of 2008 impacted the IMB, I asked the team, “What do we do now?” The answer they gave was, “Now it is up to the churches to take the lead.” The next three presidents of the IMB made the same statement in their inaugural addresses, including our current, highly effective IMB president, Dr. Paul Chitwood.

To us, the field is not the area around our church building but the area of more than 2 billion people on the other side of the world who have yet to hear the gospel.  Those really are harvest fields, and the mission of our church is to provide training and a stable base for church-planting adventures on the other side of the earth.

Fellow pastors and preachers, I’d encourage you to start an adventure by taking the lead in winning the world to Christ and planting churches along the way.

Dr. Tom Hatley

Pastor, Immanuel Baptist Church