Editor’s Note: Great Commission Bible Fellowship is one of the featured church plants in 2026 Maguire State Mission Offeringprayer guide. One hundred precent of all receipts for the Maguire Offering are designated to help launch church plants across Florida.
Pictured above: Wayne Brown (left), pastor at Great Commission Bible Fellowship, and wife pose for a photo after a church gathering. Three generation of ladies (right) capture a photo while attending the church fellowship.
JACKSONVILLE — Three days before Easter, Wayne Brown learned that Great Commission Bible Fellowship would no longer have a place to worship. The church plant had been meeting in an elementary school cafeteria and was beginning to gain momentum through community outreach. Brown and the congregation had reserved a nearby park for an Easter event, where families gathered for an Easter egg hunt, games and activities. The church invited those families to return the next morning for Easter worship.
Then the school called. Because it could no longer provide janitorial services on Sundays, the agreement with the church had to end. Brown and the congregation decided to gather at the park for prayer on Easter morning. But at 5 a.m. that morning, Brown received another call: his father had died. Brown had been traveling between Jacksonville and Georgia to care for his father, who had been battling congestive heart failure and chronic obstructive pulmonary disease. His father had recently entered hospice care, but Brown had been told he might have another six months to a year.
“I wasn’t expecting him to go two days later,” Brown said.
The loss came while Brown was already balancing church planting, a full-time job and school. The church eventually found another place to meet in May, renting a former church facility that is now used as a dance studio. But the challenges of establishing a new congregation have continued.
Through the challenges, however, Brown said God has been teaching him to trust Christ rather than his own ability to build the church. His journey toward church planting began while studying at Trinity Baptist College in Jacksonville, where he came to recognize problems in a ministry he had previously been involved with. A professor eventually encouraged him to consider church planting, leading Brown to connect with church-planting leaders and eventually partner with New Berlin Road Church as his sending church.
“I have learned on this journey that I have limitations,” Brown said. “What I can’t do, what I’m unable to do, hand it over to the One who can do it.” Brown said he realized he had become too focused on building the church himself. “I didn’t come up with the concept of the church. Jesus did,” he said. “So if it’s His church, then let Him do it. He said that He will build His church.”
Through the Maguire State Mission Offering, Florida Baptists can pray for and support church planters like Brown as they establish Gospel-centered churches throughout the state. Brown’s requests are simple: strength, wisdom and discernment, along with prayer that God would send families, particularly men, to join the church.
Brown believes the difficulties of this season are not wasted. “This is all a test that will one day be a testimony.”
More information about supporting Great Commission Bible Fellowship and other church plants in Florida can be found at flbaptist.org/send.
