Neal Hughes said he didn’t know the story of Caesar Blackwell, a church planter in the mid-1800s, until he became director of missions for Montgomery Baptist Association in 2016. Gary Burton, pastor of Pintlala Baptist Church, shared it with him.
Hughes has carried that story with him ever since.
Blackwell “was used by God in a great way in the frontier days of Alabama Baptists and the Alabama Baptist Association, the front runner of Montgomery Baptist Association,” Hughes said. “He was the first Montgomery Baptist Association church planting strategist, serving the river region in the 1830s and 1840s.”
‘Great Kingdom warrior’
The members of ABA commissioned Blackwell, an African American, to preach the gospel and start new churches in central Alabama, Hughes said. He noted Blackwell did that with great success. Many were saved, and two of those churches still exist today.
“I thought it would be important for us Montgomery Baptists to speak of the legacy of such a great Kingdom warrior that has not been told all these years,” Hughes said.
That’s why he said God laid it on his heart to start the Caesar Blackwell Award for Multiplying Church Planting — to honor Blackwell’s legacy and to honor men who are carrying that mantle. The annual award will be given to church planters who are leading their churches to train church planting interns, aggressively plant other churches and be a supportive sending church.
Inaugural awards given Nov. 7
During the MBA annual meeting Nov. 7, Hughes presented the inaugural Caesar Blackwell award to Terrence Jones, pastor of Strong Tower at Washington Park, and Dewayne Rembert, pastor of Flatline Church at Chisholm and church planting strategist for MBA.
“Our first two recipients are our heroes of today, Terrence and Dewayne,” Hughes said of the two Montgomery church planters. “They both started a church that started churches, and they have their internship programs. They’re calling out the called, developing and deploying other church planters.”
Rembert said he sees the award as “a testament of God’s grace” that God saved him, saw fit to use him and has provided the resources and open doors for his church to plant other churches.
“Our job is to just be faithful and obey Him and watch Him work,” Rembert said.
‘Encouraging us to keep moving forward’
Jones said he also sees the award as a team award for his church, which “has been very supportive of our church planting efforts.”
Strong Tower at Washington Park is “not very big but continuing to trust God in these situations and be more about building His kingdom than the Strong Tower brand,” Jones said. “It’s a testament to the hard work of our church as a whole. It’s affirming in a way. We don’t do what we do to get awards, but to get one is one of the ways God is encouraging us to keep moving forward.”
Both men said they see it as an honor to receive an award named after Blackwell.
Rembert said he sees it as another sign of the unity among believers of different races and cultures in MBA.
And Jones said it’s meaningful to him as “the stories of African American contributions to Christianity are not often told.”
“I appreciate Montgomery Baptist Association under [Hughes’] leadership telling that story and preserving that history in a way that’s honorable to what he (Caesar Blackwell) was able to accomplish,” Jones said.
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