October 23, 2024
WARNER ROBINS, Ga. – The Georgia Baptist Mission Board has expanded the SPARK total church conference to include in-person training at five regional locations across the state next month.
The initial one will be on Aug. 6 at Second Baptist Church in Warner Robins where Woodstock First Baptist Church lead pastor Jeremy Morton will be the keynote speaker.
Some 30 breakout sessions will be held throughout the day covering nearly every area of ministry, including discipleship, child protection, missions and next gen ministries, said Scott Sullivan, the Georgia Baptist Mission Board's discipleship catalyst.
Other in-person regional SPARK events will be held at First Baptist Church in Douglas on August 13, Byne Memorial Baptist Church in Albany and First Baptist Church in Alpharetta on August 20; and Christ Place Church in Flowery Branch on August 29.
Sullivan said attendees can register now for the SPARK conference, one of the state Mission Board’s most popular events.
Nearly 6,000 people took part in the SPARK conference last year, making it one of the Georgia Baptist Mission Board’s Most popular training events.
That popularity is, in part, the result of well-known Christian leaders who provide inspirational preaching and teaching on topics of importance to pastors and others.
The state Mission Board is piping in author and seminary professor Tod Bolsinger this year for a keynote address. Bolsinger, a vice president at Fuller Theological Seminary, wrote Canoeing the Mountains, a book that provides hope to pastors who are trying to lead their churches across difficult barriers.
The book chronicles the journey of famed explorers Meriwether Lewis and William Clark as they set out in search of a route to the Pacific Ocean. The journey went well until Lewis and Clark and their entourage encountered the Rocky Mountains. The canoes that had served them so well to that point were rendered useless. They had to do something differently if they were to continue their journey. They had to adapt to a vastly different landscape. So, they ditched their canoes and pressed ahead.
Bolsinger will be one of the keynote speakers at the Aug. 25 online premiere of this year’s SPARK conference.
“All that we have assumed about leading Christian organizations, all that we have been trained for is out of date,” Bolsinger writes in the book. “We are in uncharted terrain trying to lead dying churches into a post-Christian culture that now considers the church an optional, out-of-touch and irrelevant relic of the past.”
“The answer,” Bolsinger says, “is not to try harder but to start a new adventure.”
Sullivan has pulled together a strong lineup of keynote speakers for this year’s SPARK conference. Besides Bolsinger, they include Fred Luter, senior pastor of Franklin Avenue Baptist Church in New Orleans; Michael Catt, author, producer and retired senior pastor of Georgia’s Sherwood Baptist Church; and Robby Gallaty, pastor of Long Hollow Church in Hendersonville, Tenn. and founder of Replicate Ministries.
