Both Grace Fellowship and Gateway have church multiplication at the center of their evangelistic strategies. Gateway, just four years old, has planted one church and is in the process of planting another. To make the planting process less burdensome, if not easier, they share everything—from health insurance to mission teams—with new church planters. Along the way, Ennes said, the church has consistently passed on resources (like money and mission teams from other states) that could’ve helped them grow in order to help church planters who could use them more.


Ennes said both church and pastor have whole-heartedly bought into the multiplication vision. “My heart is to reach Cleveland, not plant a church,” he added.


Gateway West, the autonomous yet partnering congregation Ennes’ church helped plant in 2009, has already grown to average weekly attendance of more than 150 people in the more blue-collar West Cleveland.


Davis believes Southern Baptists represent incredible potential in the Midwest.


“I’ve said for some time, the potential in the Midwest is tremendous,” Davis said. “The economic situation has opened up opportunities for the church to be the church. In many areas of the Midwest, we really could change the spiritual landscape.” OM


Tobin Perry is a writer for the North American Mission Board.


 


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The Prodigal’s Church
By Tobin Perry


The irony didn’t escape John Smith. When he stepped in front of the small, assembled crowd at Pontiac Central High School in July of 2008, it had been 22 years since he had been expelled from the school for selling drugs at the age of 14.


Now two decades later, he was starting a church at that very school.


“I used to sow a different kind of message at Pontiac Central,” Smith said. “God let me come back. [Now my message is] restoration and redemption.”


It’s a much-needed message in Pontiac today. Fueled by job losses at General Motors, the city has declined rapidly in recent years with the much-publicized decline of the auto industry. More than a third of the population is unemployed. Half the schools have closed in the last two years. All four of the city’s community centers have closed. Some are calling the Detroit suburb a wasteland.


It’s not the city that Smith, a Pontiac native, remembers. Yet the NAMB church planter sees potential. “Sure, there have been times when I have wanted to leave, but this city needs the God who is in us,” Smith said. “This city will rise from the ashes. My dad raised me and taught me to never stop believing in the people of this city. For some reason, I’ve grabbed onto that. Where other people see problems, I see opportunities.


36 Summer 2011 • onmission.com

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