By Grace Thornton
The Alabama Baptist
Chris Parker says he thinks he’s a decently persuasive person. He can get people excited about something. But when the rubber meets the road getting someone to move 25 hours away from home takes more than persuasion.
“God has to call them to go,” he said.
Cast a vision
Parker, now a church planter in Phoenix, said that’s what happened for him. Several years ago he was serving as a student pastor in south Georgia when his pastor, John Jenkins, moved to Northport Baptist Church and asked him to consider coming too.
But Jenkins didn’t just want him in Northport — he wanted Parker to go to Phoenix.
“He told me that the calling he felt God had put on his heart was for Northport Baptist to be a church that plants churches,” Parker said. “He wanted me to pray about being their first church planter.”
The plan would be for him to come to Northport first for a couple of years as a college pastor, build relationships with students, cast a vision — and build a team of new college grads to take to Phoenix with him.
“The idea is that they, as new college graduates, would be able to get a job in any major city. They could move to Phoenix and work as a nurse or teacher while they work with the church plant,” Parker said.
It sounded good but for Parker the rubber finally met the road when he got to see it for himself.
“It took coming to Phoenix multiple times before I knew in my heart that God had called me to Phoenix,” he said. “It was in Phoenix that God broke my heart for the people of Phoenix.”
That’s why he’s such a big fan of the North American Mission Board’s GenSend program, an opportunity for college students to spend six to eight weeks in the summer exploring a city, investing in it and learning from church planters.
This summer Parker had two of his former students from the University of Alabama come and serve with his team at Freedom Church in Phoenix, something he believes changed them.
“It’s those kinds of experiences when you go it changes you — you don’t have the choice to ever be the same again,” he said. “They’re really wrestling with God’s call on their life and whether or not Phoenix is a part of that.”
‘God made me’
Bethany Patterson said the summer really pushed her out of her comfort zone.
“Even though I’m a pretty quiet person I think I became a lot more bold,” she said. “I really got a peace about being who God made me to be and seeing Him use that to reach people.”
For more information about GenSend visit sendrelief.org/gensend.
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