Garold Smith

Pastor Jongha Park planned to retire, but God had other plans.
He had been in ministry since 1996, serving as pastor at a Baptist church in Daytona Beach and for 20 years as pastor of Korean Open Door Baptist Church in Oviedo.

Jared Mitcham believes that most people have the wrong impression of missionaries. Rather than seeing missionaries as regular people following God’s call God on their lives, he says many have a different impression.

Sabbaticals are often associated with tenured professors taking a semester off to write, do research or study abroad; the term is rarely used for pastors. But, for Florida Baptist pastors, the concept has evolved over the past couple of years and, thanks to the experience of one pastor, the value of pastoral sabbaticals is now appreciated more fully.

No one knew there was a need for a new Vietnamese church in Jacksonville, but when a Vietnamese businessman moved there from Denver, God’s plan began to take shape. A plan that would change a family, a church and a city.  

In a section of the northeastern U.S. that was once the cradle of American independence and the Great Awakening, religion is no longer part of the culture. Instead, like the historic churches that sit empty and unused, the gospel is viewed as part of a once-important past no longer relevant or necessary to modern life in New England.