Cody Clark said the new couch, chairs, end tables and coffee table that are headed to his church’s lobby soon will be a “massive” help for him and his church.
“As a church plant in the inner city, we have a little bit of a different model. About 70 percent of our church lives below the poverty line,” said Clark, lead pastor of Living Faith Church Irvington in Indianapolis. “Without partnerships — both one-off gifts and ongoing partners — we wouldn’t be able to do ministry to the level that God has called us to do.”
The new furniture will offer some seating space for conversations and counseling in the lobby of the 100-year-old building they’re renovating.
Clark said the gift came his way because of the Alabama Baptist State Board of Missions’ booth at the Southern Baptist Convention Annual Meeting at the conference center just down the street.
‘Economical plus has a benefit afterward’
Doug Rogers, director of the SBOM office of communications and technology services, said the idea started back in 2019 when the SBC annual meeting was in Birmingham. During the meeting, Kathie Chute, who at the time served as communications director at California Baptist University, asked him if he knew of a church plant in Alabama that could use the furniture from their booth.
“She said typically because of cost of shipping and renting, they design their exhibit where they can find a local ministry or church plant and work with them to buy furniture and then give it away after the SBC meeting,” Rogers said. “She said it’s just as economical plus has a benefit afterward.”
He didn’t forget that, and this year as he made plans for the SBOM booth, he realized they too could do better investing in an Indianapolis-area church plant than renting or shipping furniture.
Scotty Goldman, director of the SBOM office of global missions, said he felt the same way when he saw the prices.
“There’s no need for us to pay $500 to rent a chair for three days when we can buy four chairs for that amount of money and leave it for a church plant,” he said.
So he reached out to local partners to find a church that could put some furniture to use, then he connected with Clark.
“I told him, ‘We’d like to purchase something and give it to you guys — something you can use,” Goldman said. “We gave them a budget, and they went out and bought something that fit what they needed.”
‘Grateful’
Clark and others at Living Faith then assembled the furniture and delivered it to the convention center for the SBOM to use during the meeting. Afterward, they will pick it up and take it back to the church.
Clark said he’s so grateful for the gift. As the church plant approaches its second anniversary this fall, Clark and his wife, Talor, are so grateful to see all the big and small ways God has been at work in their lives and in the life of the church.
“We’re insanely thankful,” he said.
Rogers said it’s a blessing for Alabama Baptists to be a small part of that.
“I don’t know if it’s common practice or not (to share furniture in this way after the SBC meeting), but it’s a neat idea and makes sense,” he said. “It’s nice to have an option where we could bless a local ministry.”
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