(Editor’s note: The 2016 IBSA Annual Meeting brought more than 500 pastors and church members to Broadview Missionary Baptist Church and Chicagoland, including some who hadn’t visited the city in a while—or ever before. Linda Darden, who serves on IBSA’s Church Consulting Team, shared this “praise report” after her trip to the meeting. She was accompanied by her husband, Jerry, pastor of New Life Church in Waverly, near Springfield. Linda shared the following.)
If it hadn’t been for the annual meeting being in Chicago, and my poor sense of direction, I wouldn’t have asked my husband to take a few days off work at his secular job. Since he has gone bivocational, he usually can’t attend the meetings and conferences, but God had other things in mind for him.
I’d been praying that this would be a refreshing time for him, but it became so much more. His attitude toward Chicago was that it was THAT place, but God used this time to show him the faces of people in THAT place, and now he has a desire to bring what he has learned back to little old Waverly New Life.
He was especially interested in the story of Jonathan de la O, who planted Starting Point Community Church in Chicago two years ago. If I understood correctly, the Hispanic church he is in has around 5,500 people in just one block. Jerry commented that in Waverly, there are around 2,000 people in a mile!
I’m not sure how God will use this in our lives, but I know he will. We plan on starting a prayer partnership with Rory Wallington of the hospitality ministry at Broadview. He has been working with gang members, so we have our first prayer request.
Jerry could probably verbalize this better than I’m writing it, but the bottom line is that this event has reached a pastor, and prayerfully will change a small church in Waverly.
So now you see why I’m thankful for Chicago traffic.