TALLAHASSEE–Tallahassee’s Celebration Baptist Church had never planted a church when it set an ambitious 40/40 goal for church planting and leadership development in honor of its 40th anniversary in 2022.
Celebration’s goal: Plant, replant or revitalize 40 churches and send 40 people into long-term ministry by 2027.
But just two years in, the church has already reached a third of both goals with 14 church plants/replants/revitalizations and 16 people going into long-term ministry. What’s more, the church now believes it’s on track to exceed both goals.
Pastor David Emmert is excited about the progress the church has made, but he’s also excited about the changes that have occurred within the church body.
“This has changed everything about our church,” Emmert said. “It has changed how we look at discipleship.”
Since Celebration started out as a church plant, Emmert said planting churches seemed like a great way to celebrate its 40th anniversary.
“We had never planted a church before so we began exploring what that would look like. Why don’t we change that?” he said. “What if we planted more than one? Let’s be about church planting.”
As Celebration leaders and members began to think of helping plant new churches, another side of the issue became apparent – the need for church leadership.
“What good would it do to plant a bunch of churches and not provide leadership?” he said. “That is another part of the puzzle.”
So, in honor of its 40th, the church adopted a 40/40 goal for both church planting and church leadership.
The church created a budget and really began to work on this in 2023. “We’re not a gigantic church, but we felt like God was calling us to this. So that’s how we decided what we’re doing to celebrate our 40th anniversary.”
Plants, replants and revitalizations
Church leaders looked at a variety of resources and partners to identify church planting opportunities, including the North American Mission Board, the Florida Baptist Convention and other missionaries they had previously worked with. They did some networking among local churches and kept ears to the ground for opportunities.
The 14 churches Celebration has helped plant, replant or revitalize are as close as Tallahassee, Madison and the Panhandle and as far away as Ethiopia, Colombia and Guatemala.
Celebration found out via email about Calvary Baptist Church, a local church on the brink of closing, desperate for assistance. Celebration sent teams to renovate Calvary, helped find a new pastor, provided leadership and resources and helped find replanting dollars available through the North American Mission Board. Calvary Baptist Church, which had dwindled to five people for Easter in 2021, had 165 in 2023 and is now doing well, he said.
Another church in Madison called seeking help, and Celebration was able to help with cleaning and painting and sending a pastor. That church had its first service in
January, and is now running 40 to 50 people in attendance each week. A new Spanish-speaking church needed help financially when it took over a failed church, and Celebration was able to assist.
“It’s a little different for each church that we help. Some need leadership; some, physical assistance and some, financial help. Some need all of it.”
Growing church leadership
Early in the process, the church realized it needed to identify not just disciples, but disciple-makers – those who could help train, mentor and disciple others. It would be from this group that the church would start to find people interested in going into long term-ministry, and some of those would help plant, replant or revitalize churches.
At any time, there are five types of people attending church, Emmert said. These are:
- Generally disinterested
- Curious
- Believers
- Disciples
- Disciple-makers
Using the church database, church leaders began to identify people who were behaving like disciples and disciple-makers based on the activities and events they were involved in at church. This allowed them to intentionally encourage disciples, to help them move up a notch to become disciple-makers.
“It allowed our discipling approach to get much more targeted and much more focused,” he said. “If we want to see 40 people go into long-term ministry, we have to raise up a substantial number of disciple-makers.”
For the purpose of its 40/40 goal, the church defined long-term ministry as someone who has spent at least one semester toward a ministry pursuit. The church started offering a ministry diploma program through New Orleans Baptist Theological Seminary that can help people get started in the ministry. It currently has about 20 to 25 people participating in both English and Spanish programs.
“It’s not a degree, but it’s something to get people thinking about ministry in a different way,” Emmert said.
The church has ordained about nine people into ministry in the past 14 months, including two most recently in May. These ordinations are becoming more common occurrences during services, and the church strives to make it a big deal because it is a big deal. “God is calling people into ministry,” he said, mentioning a member who is going to plant a church in Utah this fall.
Celebration keeps a scoreboard of its 40/40 goal in its Fellowship Café, which Emmert said has helped generate excitement among church members about what God is doing in the life of this church.
Emmert said other churches could do something similar to what Celebration has done in working to plant new churches and grow church leaders.
“We didn’t have a road map for this. We’re going through this and figuring it out as we go,” he said. “Our style is not perfect, but it’s working for us. And I am happy to talk to anyone about this.”