Montana Conference is CapMin’s First Stop in Year-Long Effort to Recruit Bible Teachers for Local Government Ministries
Capitol Ministries hosted a booth this week at MPact Montana, an annual Southern Baptist Convention conference held in Helena. Pastors and lay leaders participated in sessions on building relational skills, community outreach, and church revitalization.
Montana Baptists’ goals include: developing strong and healthy churches that are reaching their communities and developing mature Christ followers, planting new churches where they are needed most, and reaching the next generation of ministry leaders in Montana.
Capitol Ministries was overjoyed to host a booth sharing our mission which aligns perfectly with these goals. We are challenging churches to find and develop leaders who will reach their local public servants for Christ and disciple them into mature faith through in-depth, weekly, expositional Bible studies.
Torrey Lewis, our Local Government Ministry Leader in Hillsboro, Oregon, and Jon Cassel, Global Director for Africa, had the opportunity to share our mission with over 45 people personally!
Pastor Michael Johnson of Big Sky Fellowship, and our Ministry Leader in the Montana Capitol, has already built significant relationships within this organization. We estimate that a quarter of the people we met had heard of Capitol Ministries and were very thankful for our work.
The consensus was that local churches are doing a great job of reaching families and young people. However, there is a real need to reach out to local public servants, particularly the mayor, city council members, and school board.
12 men applied to start the process of becoming Bible teachers to their local elected officials! Praise be to God.
This conference was the first stop of a year-long committed effort to recruit proven, mature Bible teachers from pastoral conferences across the nation: men called to reach and disciple political leaders for Christ.
If you sense the call to join this effort, learn more at capmin.org/local!
One of the highlights of this conference for Torrey Lewis was meeting Pastor Toby:
“He has been speaking up for the rights of the unborn during his local city council meetings, hoping to make Manhattan, Montana, a sanctuary city for the unborn. He has been asked a few times to consider running for council. I was grateful for the opportunity to pray with Pastor Toby about his family’s decision.”
It was also an added blessing to meet the Executive Director of the Missouri SBC, Dr. John Yeats, who knows our own Pastor Matt Goodsell—CapMin’s Bible teacher in the Missouri Capitol, and Assistant North America Director.
And maybe you need a dose of hope for the younger generation…
Torrey and Jon met Bryce, a 16-year-old who loves the Lord and hopes to work in the legislature someday. They encouraged him to do so for the Lord!
Also, two high school students stopped by who had just been discussing the separation of church and state in their government class.
“We equipped both of them with printed copies of two key Bible studies: Understanding the Separation of Church and State; and God’s Institutions and Their Roles on Earth.”
We humbly ask you to pray specifically for the 12 men seeking to begin discipleship Bible studies with their local public servants in Montana; and for CapMin’s continued efforts to recruit men for this purpose across the nation, yea, the world!
