Guests at the IBSA Annual Meeting and Pastors’ Conference were invited to join several “vision tours” to different Chicagoland neighborhoods and communities, where they met church planters in various stages of the planting process.
On a tour of the city’s North Side, participants prayed for Edgar and Sonia Rodriguez and Bryan Coble (second, third, and fourth from left in photo at right). The Rodriguezes launched New City Fellowship last year in Humboldt Park, and Coble and his wife, Marci, moved to Chicago in the spring to plant a new church in Irving Park.
Back at Broadview Missionary Baptist Church, IBSA’s Church Planting Team facilitated a “virtual vision tour” to detail the need for new churches all across the state. (See photos on page 9.)
“I noticed that one of the counties very close to us, a county that I visit, doesn’t even have a Southern Baptist church in it,” said Jeremy Byrd, pastor of Lincoln Avenue Baptist Church in Jacksonville. On the virtual vision tour, he spent time looking at a map of the distribution of Baptist churches in Illinois.
“We would love to see a plant go in there,” Byrd said. “We’d love to partner with somebody to do that.”