God's Ideal Church

September 2, 2026 | Noah Sidhom continues the series on Praying Through God's Word focusing on Acts 9:31, describing God's ideal church as one unified in peace, growth, fear of the Lord, and comfort of the Holy Spirit despite challenging circumstances. Joined by Danny Sinquefield, they discuss church unity, prayer, church planting in Tennessee, and the importance of supporting new churches, highlighting current efforts around Memphis and West Tennessee.

Show Notes

Noah continues in his weekly series of Praying Through God's Word by examining Acts 9:31, and looking at what God's ideal church should aspire to be. He is joined this week by Danny Sinquefield, Pastor Emeritus of Faith Baptist Church in Bartlett. They talk about Danny's time at Faith Baptist and his relationship with Steve Gaines and other churches throughout the state. They also make the importance of prayer for the local church and churches statewide known.

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Worship service on Wednesday nights in the Chapel

Hey, thank you so much for being here this evening. In just a few moments, I'm gonna invite Pastor Danny Sinquefield to come up with me and we're gonna have a conversation about some of the scripture that we're looking at tonight. So grateful to have him and for his willingness to spend the evening. And I'm extra grateful for him because he agreed, Sam, to tell me all about you as a neighbor. So Sam is one of his neighbors and he has come to spill the beans on the true Sam McElroy. So, hey, before we jump in tonight, let's pray. Lord, I thank you so much for the opportunity that you've given us to gather this evening. Lord, I thank you for this chapel and just for the sacredness of this place and this space, Lord, and just the word that has been taught here and the songs have been sung and the prayers have been prayed in this room for decades. And so, Lord, we thank you that we get to join in the work that you're doing and that we get to continue the legacy. And as we stand here tonight, Lord, I pray that your word would not return void but would go out and accomplish every single thing that you send it out to accomplish. And I pray this in the name of Jesus. Amen. Amen. I'm gonna talk for just a few moments, said every preacher, but it's true, just a few moments. Who here and here likes to garden? Does anybody like to grow things in the garden? You know, I like the idea of gardening and I'm really good at starting a garden, but my wife keeps gardens alive a lot better than I do. But when you are planting a garden, the environment makes a huge difference in terms of what is gonna come in the outcome. You can't just throw a garden anywhere. You gotta consider the soil. You gotta consider how much sunlight, how much shade, all that type stuff, what types of plants you're planting. They're all there together. And the right environment produces an incredible growth for a garden. But when you have the wrong environment, everything just doesn't work out. I think the same can be true when you look at athletes. Many times you'll see an athlete and they don't appear to be all that great, but you put them in the right team in the right place at the right time and magic starts to happen. I think of Tom Brady. Many people consider him to be the greatest quarterback to ever play the game. And one of the greatest NFL players of all time. You know, he has seven Superbowl rings. He has the most of anybody. Do you know what the second place person, you know how many he has? Three. So that shows you how good this guy was. But do you know when he was drafted into the NFL in the year 2000, you know, they go one by one and the teams each get a turn in getting to pick which player that's available that they want to join their team. Do you know what draft pick Tom Brady was? 199. He was the 199th pick. So 198 people before him were more desirable than Tom Brady. But when you put Tom Brady and you put the coach and the team and everything just worked out and he was a second string and the front guy got injured and they put him in and everything just worked and we got Tom Brady. When you put people in the right environment at the right time, really cool things can happen. Have you ever thought about what is the right environment for a church? What is the right environment? If God is going to use a church, if God is going to work in a mighty way through a church, is there a right environment for that to happen? I believe that Acts 9 31, that's what we're gonna look at this evening. Acts chapter nine, verse 31. I believe that this gives us a picture of God's ideal church. This is I believe God's will for every church that is planted, every church that is active and this is what God wants churches to look like. The Bible says in Acts 9 31, so the church throughout all Judea and Galilee and Samaria had peace and was being built up and walking in the fear of the Lord and in the comfort of the Holy Spirit, it multiplied. I believe that's what God wants to be said of every single church. But do you know what type of circumstances this church was living in? You know, so often we think, well, if we're in the right town or in the right part of town or if the right people can come to our church or enough people give money, whatever it is, we think all these things are needed in order to make a great church and we think we need these perfect environments. But if you look back at the beginning of Acts chapter nine in verses one and two, listen to the environment that this thriving church existed in. It says, but Saul, still breathing threats and murder against the disciples of the Lord, went to the high priest and asked him for letters to the synagogues of Damascus so that if he found any belonging to the way, if he found any Christians, men or women, he might bring them bound to Jerusalem. See, Christians at this time were being hunted and they were being murdered. They were going into hiding. They were scattering all over the known world. And we might say that is the worst possible environment for God to grow a church. But I believe when God looks at a church like that, he doesn't see a lost cause. He sees fertile ground. I think today for us here in Memphis, sometimes a lot of people look at Memphis and speak very negatively about this city. People talk about how maybe it's too far gone or that God's done working here. You know, the poverty rate in Memphis, I looked it up this week, is over 24%. The Memphis, it's always good to be number one, except for this, Memphis is ranked number one in violent crime in the nation recently, according to the FBI. Almost six times higher than the national average. There are so many things. This is the city at the center of a lot of the controversy, obviously with the civil rights movement where Martin Luther King Jr. was assassinated. There is a lot of history in the city. There's a lot of great things in our past, in our history, but there are a lot of really hard things in our history. It's easy for us to look at a city like Memphis and say, well, that's not the ideal situation. That is not the right place for a church to thrive. But I really do believe that when God looks at Memphis, He sees fertile ground. I believe when God looks at Memphis, He wants to do something unlike we've never seen before. I believe He wants to see Acts 9 31 churches all over this city. So tonight, as we continue in our series on praying God's word, as you walk out tonight, you'll get this verse card for tonight for Acts 9 31. And this is one of the easiest verses I'm gonna give you all semester to be able to pray, because all you have to do is change the name of that town to Memphis, and you can pray it exactly how it is. We can pray that the church throughout all Memphis would have peace, be built up, and walk in the fear of the Lord and the comfort of the Holy Spirit, and that it would multiply. Very quickly, let's look at that, and then Danny's gonna join us. We see there at the beginning, I love this, the church throughout all Judea and Galilee and Samaria, this was a unified church. This wasn't, well, first Baptist over here was doing this, and second Baptist, and are there third Baptists? I've never seen one. But all of these different churches, and no, we got all these different denominations, and we're all doing these different things. This was a unified church. They weren't even in the same city. They were spread throughout, and it was the church, and they acted like the church. It was a unified church. And we need to be praying for the churches across Memphis to be unified with one another. One reason I'm excited to have Danny here tonight is he was part of something that Brother Steve was part of, of pastors coming together and praying together. I'm gonna get him to talk about that here in just a, in a moment. But he had the church throughout all Judea, Galilee, and Samaria, they had peace. Do you remember when I read just 30 verses prior that Saul was out there and murdering the Christians? But in the midst of that, the church experienced peace. And that might be surprising at face value, but when you really consider what Jesus said, he said, what my peace I give you, not as the world gives, do I give you, but the peace that I have, do I give you. You remember when Jesus was on the boat with his disciples and the storm came over the boat and everyone thought they were going to die and they got really angry at Jesus because what was he doing? He was sleeping in the back of the boat. That's the kind of peace that Jesus has. That's the kind of peace that Jesus offers us. And that's what we see in Acts 9 31. They were a peaceful church. Goes on to say the church had peace and was being built up. This is a church that was actively growing. This was not a stagnant church. The Bible says in Ephesians 4 11 and following that God gives pastors and teachers and church leaders in order not to do the work of the ministry, but to equip the saints for the work of the ministry and to build up the church. And that's the role of pastors at churches is not to try to do everything, not to try to beg you to do everything, but to equip you and to challenge you in order to do the work that God has called you to do. So this was a strengthened church, one that was being built up. And I love this. They were walking in the fear of the Lord and in the comfort of the Holy Spirit. It'd be so easy to, in this situation, to think that these were Saul-fearing churches because they all knew who Saul was and they knew that Saul was coming after them. It could be a persecution-fearing church, but this was a church that feared the Lord. And when you fear the Lord, you won't fear anything else. You see, the more you look at Jesus, the smaller everything else becomes in this world. The more you look at your problems. Now, I guarantee you, if they sat around at church meetings and said, what are we gonna do about Saul? Saul's coming. I heard he's heading this way, whatever it is. And they were talking.

talking about Saul and what he was doing all the time, they would have been panicked. But they did not do that. They were keeping their eyes on Jesus and they were filled and walking with fear of the Lord and the comfort of the Holy Spirit. They weren't finding their comfort in the world or in their circumstances. They were finding their comfort in the Holy Spirit. And then I love this. They were walking in the fear of the Lord, the comfort of the Holy Spirit, and it multiplied. Now, I'll admit for years when I read that, I thought that this church was getting, I would think of a church that was just getting bigger and bigger and bigger and they were multiplying in number. And we definitely know in Acts that that was true of the churches, that they were growing and day by day people were being added to the church. And on one day, 3,000 people were added to the church. So these churches were getting larger and growing, but they were also multiplying. And what that means is that one church became two churches. Two churches became four churches. Let's see if you're paying attention. You can do math. Four churches became eight churches. And that's what was happening all throughout this area. And really some of that was fueled by the persecution and they were having to, they couldn't meet in huge buildings like we have here. They were meeting in smaller houses and smaller gatherings. And when they would fill up this gathering, they would start a new church and they would start to gather in that way. And while that's partially caused by the persecution, that was God's will for them all along. Some of Jesus's last words in Acts 1.8 says, you will receive power when the Holy Spirit has come upon you. And you're gonna be my witnesses in Jerusalem, yes, but in Judea and Samaria and to the utter ends of the earth. And so while Jesus did not send the persecution, I don't believe, he definitely allowed it. And Jesus used the persecution of the church in order to make this church a healthy church. And so as you pray this week, I encourage you to take this card. I've been so encouraged the last several weeks hearing from different people in this room who have talked about different places that they've placed these cards and different ways that you're praying through it. Once again, I encourage you, the challenge here and the win is not that you pray through every single verse we're going through every single week, but the win here is that you are praying consistently. So if this is a verse that you think can help you in your prayer time, I encourage you to hold onto this verse and read it and put the name of churches, put the name of cities in there. I pray this verse every single morning for Bellevue and for about six or seven other churches within the area that I'm praying for in the city of Memphis and the surrounding areas, asking that the Lord would allow us to experience peace and that we would be built up and walking in the fear of the Lord in the comfort of the Holy Spirit, that they would multiply. Now, I wanna ask Danny to go ahead and come up here and join me. We'll head up here to the seating up here. And I would love to introduce you. Many of you know Danny Sinquefield. He's been in the city of Memphis for many years. And he is currently on staff at the Tennessee Baptist Mission Board. And I've known of Danny for many years. I've enjoyed him from afar and enjoyed listening to his messages. And like I said, he was a good friend of Brother Steve and Brother Steve always spoke very highly of him. But I didn't have much of a chance to really get to know him, but he was very kind. And the week after Brother Steve's funeral, he reached out to me and invited me and we went to lunch and got to spend some time together. And he was a really big encouragement. You know those times where somebody encourages you and you know that they have no idea how much they encouraged you? Danny's that kind of guy. And so I'm so excited that he's here, but would you welcome Danny Sinquefield. Thank you. Thank you all. So Danny, in some of these, I don't even know the answer to. And some of these questions I may not have even sent you ahead of time. You should make stuff up, it's good. Can you hear me okay? I really came to talk about my neighbor. So that's the, save that one for last. What's his grass look like? Is it a- So here's the thing about talking about your neighbor. He also has stories on us. So we're just gonna choose to be nice to each other, Sam. That's right. All right, we'll have the after party when we get done here. So Danny, so you were a longtime pastor at Faith Baptist in Bartlett, Tennessee. How long did you pastor there and how'd you get there? Sure, yeah. So my wife Rhonda is with me here this evening. We came to Faith Baptist in 1994 as their first full-time pastor. My first role of senior pastor and I wound up staying there my whole life. Almost 28 years there at Faith. And about 10 of those years was pastoring, of course, with Dr. Rogers here. That was quite a great honor. And then the other years with Dr. Steve and now with Dr. Ben. But so we came back to Memphis. I'm born and raised. Rhonda and I grew up in Memphis and we love the city. Thank you for sharing that burden as well. We moved away to Florida, central Florida for 12 years where I served on staff of a great church there. Our three sons were born there, but God called us back home. And it's been a great journey. We're grateful. We love the city. We love West Tennessee. What was it like pastoring for 10, 11 years in the same city as Adrian Rogers? Yeah, so initially there was a lot of intimidation when I would come to the pastor's conference. I'm 30 years old and Dr. Rogers would come sit at our table and I was gonna spill something. I didn't wanna do that in front of him, but it was a great honor. You always felt like we had our big brother, Bellevue Baptist, in our corner. And it was always good to have our Bellevue family close by. We came here for a lot of events, a lot of things. A couple of things though that I would just share kind of backstory about Dr. Rogers. On one occasion, I think we were having an associational event hosted here at Bellevue. And I was one of the five or six guys selected to speak. There were five or six speakers. And I don't know if you guys are still on the radio on Sunday nights. Back in those days, there was a live radio. And so you had to sit on the front row. One of the staff members would, and you said in the order that you were gonna speak. So there were like five of us and we had six or seven minutes each. And so the first couple of guys came and spoke and they did their time. And I'm sitting there on the front row. And on my right side, on this side, is Dr. Stephen Olford. And on this side is Dr. Adrian Rogers. And I started thinking, one of these things is not like the other. And, but he was always so gracious, so kind. On another occasion, Bellevue's staff used to have what they called staff retreats. Two or three days, they would stay in the building. You know, they would eat together. They would have music and singing and they would have a guest. Well, I got to be one of those guests. And can I just tell you, I never got over that intimidation factor when I was speaking or preaching and Dr. Rogers is sitting on the front row. So even now, my heart's beating fast just being in the house. But what a legacy, what a gift to our churches and to the Southern Baptist Convention he has been. I'm deeply grateful. You know, when Dr. Rogers went to be with the Lord, Miss Joyce Rogers eventually made her way to be with family and who were at Faith Baptist. So Danny got to be Joyce Rogers' pastor while he was pastor there. And that meant he had to actually start attributing those quotes to Adrian Rogers. He can no longer claim them as his own. And I had to get them right because Miss Joyce knew exactly the words, yeah, so. So what year did you retire from Faith? So yeah, the word retire is strong language. You know, I just shifted my role. So in 2022, in January 2022, I entered the call to go serve with Tennessee Baptist Mission Board. And I guess they considered a retirement from pastoring, but now I've had the privilege of being the pastor emeritus at Faith Baptist. We're still there. I'm just never, I never get to go, but Rhonda's there every Sunday, most Sundays, unless she's with me. She's a much better church member than you are. Our pastor, Dr. Lee Brand, just said, keep sending your wife and your money. And that's, so that's the way that goes. And we're trying to be faithful. But so yeah, 2022 is when I took on the new role with Tennessee Baptist. So can you tell us a little bit about what that role is and how you function in that? Sure. So the official title is called a Harvest Field Team Leader. Our state, as you know, is a big, long geographical piece of land. We have roughly 3,000 partner churches, give or take a few. And so we have six harvest fields divided up into 500 churches each. So there are six guys that do what I do. I coach, I consult, I make connections. I have 16 counties of West Tennessee. I'm, by the way, harvest field number one. I like being number one. We like to win. So West Tennessee and all of the 16 counties, 532 churches, 10 associations. That's 532 pastors and staff that we get a chance to encourage and lead into. And so, yeah. And you actually went to lunch with me. So thank you for doing that. Yeah. Thank you. One of my guys. So really his role, he really is a pastor to pastors. And anybody that knows Danny would 100% describe him as a Barnabas, like you'd see in the book of Acts. He's an incredible encourager. And so as Southern Baptist and as a Tennessee Baptist, I'm grateful to have somebody like Danny out there and encouraging the pastors and helping strengthen the churches. As these churches are attempting to strengthen the area and reach the area, Danny does an incredible job of encouraging them and helping strengthen them along the way. So I alluded to this a few moments ago. Can you tell me how you got to know?

Brother Steve, and then what your relationship looked like. Sure, I've known of Dr. Steve Gaines for a long time, even before he came to Bellevue. But soon after he arrived, he reached out to several pastors in the metro Memphis area and I was on that list. And we began to have breakfast together and meet together to pray. And we did that for a number of years. And then the thing that you mentioned about the Memphis praying pastors happened during COVID actually, when we couldn't meet together. So he got us all together, eight or 10 of us, wasn't a big group, but eight or 10 of us, different denominations. And we just began to pray. That became a regular routine every Tuesday at four o'clock. I never wanted to miss that prayer. In fact, I was just, as you were reading that verse, Acts 9 31, Dr. Steve prayed that verse all the time for our individual churches, for our city. And I thank you for praying for the city. I would just encourage you to add the state of Tennessee. We've got a lot of prayer needs in our churches across the state. So thank you that all those things would be true. Steve Gaines, just an unusually gifted pastor, brother, he was an encourager. And you think about the bigness and the busyness of Bellevue Baptist, but he was never too busy to take a phone call, to answer an email or a text or whatever, that's a rare quality and a great gift. On my phone, I have, I don't know, maybe half a dozen, eight or 10 maybe, voicemails that I've saved through the years from just two or three special people. My former pastor, a couple of preacher friends, but I've got a couple from Steve Gaines that I just can't let go. One of them was on my birthday. He just started singing, happy birthday. So I thought, this is like gold, I'm keeping this forever. And then about six or eight months before he passed, he called me and left a voicemail. I can't imagine why I wasn't, I was somewhere where I couldn't answer it. But he just started saying, I wanna talk to you about what you do in your role of encouraging other pastors. I wanna do what you do. And that was his plan, that was his dream, his hope. And I've saved that voicemail. Well, thank you for doing that. You had a meeting every Tuesday at four o'clock to have that prayer time. I had something on my calendar at 345 every Tuesday to help him get on that Zoom call. So. It was tricky, it was tricky, yeah. So, yeah, and really, like he said, Brother Steve prayed this. I cannot tell you how many times I heard Brother Steve pray this. And in January or February of this year, I got to, I was spending some time with Pastor Steve. And I told him then, I said, I'm feeling kind of convicted because I realized that most every verse I have memorized is because I heard him pray it so many times. I told him one of the last things I got to tell him was that I was gonna start memorizing some of my own verses so that I wouldn't just be able to quote his verses. So I don't even know what translation I have these memorized in. They're probably a mixture of all of them, whatever Steve could remember. Steve Gaines version. Yeah. So, yeah, that's great. So you spend really your days, you travel all over West Tennessee. How would you assess the health of the churches in West Tennessee? And what are the, you said there are many prayer needs. What are the big prayer needs of across the state? Yeah, sure. You know, I really, honestly, one of the things that you know about pastors, if you're pastoring one church for a long period of time, we don't get out much, especially on Sundays. You know, we don't get to go visit a lot of churches, maybe on vacation once in a while, whatever, but we're, you know, we're busy on Sundays. So this role has allowed me the privilege of being in different churches almost every Sunday. Almost every Sunday, I'm invited somewhere to go preach. I'll be in Walnut Hill Baptist in Bells, Tennessee on Sunday, this coming Sunday. So one of the things that I've learned, excuse me, is that God has great people everywhere, in little, you know, small places and little hamlets, little towns that we've never heard of. I mean, Brother Sam, I've gone through some territory here in West Tennessee, Skullbone, Tennessee up there, you know, near Bradford, and Nankapoo up near Halls and Ripley. Those are real places. And so I'm just loving all that. But, you know, one of the things, so I'm encouraged about, for the most part, that we have, you know, great faithful pastors and great godly people who love their towns, love their cities, and they're doing the work of, you know, sharing the gospel. At the same time, there's, you know, great lostness everywhere. Think about Tennessee being, used to be called the belt buckle of the Bible Belt, the buckle of the Bible Belt. Well, we have 7 million people that live in our state, plus 7.2 million, I think, something like that. And the estimate is about 4 million lost people. 4 million, well over half of our state. And, you know, let's gauge by, there's zero church attendance. They don't go to anybody's church anywhere. There's no connection with any gospel impacting church in their life. So that's a great burden. We have a lot of work to do. So I see that not as an obstacle, but as the fertile soil that you mentioned a moment ago, just like the great city of Memphis is our mission field. We have a great opportunity to be the salt and the light and to make a difference and to reach people. They're everywhere. Lost people are everywhere. People need the Lord, Brother Sam, they sure do. And we have the message, we have the means to do it. We just need revival to stir us to that end. We need a movement of the Holy Spirit to bring about some urgency. I think that's a prayer need. We need some renewal of urgency. Jesus is coming, by the way. Jesus is coming. And we need to be reminded that we have today. You know, we gotta work while it's yet day because the night is coming when no man can work. And so I'm constantly reminded of that. I'm burdened by that. We've got, you're not allowed to have grandchildren yet, but I'm burdened for my grandchildren. You know, we've got the greatest message in the world. We've got the greatest vehicle, the church, God's chosen vehicle to take the good news to the whole world. And so we have every reason to be excited and to be laser focused on the call that God's given us. One last thing to pray for. Of those 3,000 churches that we have across our state that partner together in Tennessee Baptist life, there are an estimated 300 of those churches tonight that have no pastor, no pastor in the pulpit. A full 10%, a little more than that actually, closer to 350, do not have a pastor today. And we need a movement of God in our churches to call out young men who will sense the call to ministry, but particularly to pastoral ministry. Thank the Lord for missionaries. Thank the Lord for music guys. Thank the Lord for youth workers. We need some guys who will follow the Lord's leadership, His call in their life, to craft the craft of preaching, proclaiming, and pastoring the church. We need that desperately. Thank you. And I would definitely encourage you, like he said, we definitely want to pray for the churches in Memphis, but as you pray this verse, it won't take long until you have this verse memorized, just praying it every once in a while. And so I would encourage you as you're driving down I-40, as you're going different places, as you go into different towns and just be praying for the churches in those areas, because they really do need support and they need prayer. And prayer is not all that we can do, but it really is one of the most important things that we can do for these churches. So Danny, so that's all of West Tennessee. The last several years, we have heard a lot about Blue Oval City and kind of some, hey, we're opening next year and there's some slowdowns and whatnot. Is Blue Oval still happening? And what is Blue Oval City? Sure, glad to give you an update on all things Blue Oval City. So about, you know, when I came on, just a few months after I came on five years ago, we started hearing about the big purchase that happened in Haywood County, right there at exit 42, a Stanton address that the Ford Motor Company was building the largest automobile manufacturing plant in the world. Massive, $5.8 billion invested. They had 3,000 workers come, construction workers come, for about two and a half years or three years maybe. They were building the plant and getting things ready. It was to be the home of the all electric F-150 Ford Lightning truck. And then an election, a presidential election happened. And so the all electric theme kind of went down to the, you know, so it wasn't the highest priority anymore. So Ford has tapped the brakes on their production. They're retooling. They're in the building now. The building's massive. If you haven't ridden past it, you all know we have a Buc-ee's coming, right? You all know we have a Buc-ee's coming at exit 28. Just a couple of exits further east is exit 42. And you want to go left from there. So what's happened is this. Baptists, historically, have been late to the party. We have, you know, watched and wondered, you know, we thought about it, didn't do much. This is one of those times where we actually got ahead of the game a little bit. But the Lord, by his grace, has given us a little bit of time to plant new churches strategically around the Blue Oval City area, where we believe eventually, when all things happen, and it will happen. Right now, what I heard last was they're going to be rolling out their hybrids, their large commercial vans and trucks. But the date discouraged me. They're calling it 2029. Eventually, that plant will host about 8,000 workers. That means.

8,000 families will be moving into the area. They're already moving in, some of the engineers and managers and all that are already moving in. They're beginning the process of hiring folks. So it's gonna happen. I use this language. Every time Ford taps the brakes, Tennessee Baptists step on the gas. And so, and I wanna say thank you for this church, your church, man, you all know this. If you don't know it, let me tell you. Bellevue Baptist is one of the leading churches in mission giving through the cooperative program and all the mission organizations that we work together to support. I really just stopped by here to say thank you. Thank you to the chapel service. I want you to spread that everywhere you can, that we are deeply grateful for the partnership that Bellevue brings. So yeah, we have right now currently, our goal is to have enough churches to meet the need of 70 to 80,000 more people that are coming to the area. That's 30 to 40 new churches. Right now we have seven new churches that are already up and running. One of those, you'll talk about in a minute, young man that came out of, well, the two staff guys, planted churches in Blue Oval City that we're really proud of, really excited about it. There's a young man that came out of Bellevue when he was a boy, Mike Young. I don't know if you'd ever know him, but he loves Bellevue. Dr. Rogers, I think, was the ordaining pastor when Mike was ordained. Mid-America grad. Mike Young's pastoring a new church called Life Point Church in Brownsville, right at exit 62. Next Sunday, not this Sunday, but the next Sunday, they'll baptize 15 people in a lake. They're renting facilities. They'll go to a farm house with a lake on it, and they'll baptize 15 new believers. That little brand new church been going about a year, running 170. Talking about going to two churches. So the Lord is at work, and man, we're deeply grateful for the good news. So he mentioned two churches. One is J. Stevenson at Manor Community Church. It's in, was that Galloway? Yeah, Galloway. Galloway, just barely outside of Arlington, Tennessee, and he's doing a great work out there. The second, you guys know Derek Ewaldt. So they left Bellevue staff, I guess, about nine months ago or so, and they have been working diligently in order to prepare for a launch, and they are about four weeks away from launching their church in Arlington, Tennessee. It's called Arlington Baptist Church, and I asked Derek if he would be willing to send a quick update, and he sent a video. I'd love for you to hear from Derek tonight as well. Hey, Bellevue, Derek Ewaldt with Arlington Baptist Church, and I'm so excited to be talking to you for just a couple moments. Thank you, Noah Situm, for the invitation to be able to share some things that are going on at Arlington. Thank you, Brother Danny, for preaching the word of God tonight. You two brothers are dear friends and great encouragers to me in my life, and Bellevue, thank you. Thank you that you allowed me to be on staff for almost 20 years. Thank you for the investments you made in me, my wife, my four children, but you know what? About nine months ago, God called us to step away, and when he did, we have been amazed that although we stepped out of our comfort zone and into the unknown, that God has been faithful all along the way to provide everything that's needed. I'm actually sitting in my truck down in Alabama right now because I just picked up a portable baptistry that somebody purchased for our church, and I'm really excited that in 32 days, I'm gonna baptize my oldest daughter, Maddie, on October 4th during our first public worship service. You know, Mid-America Baptist Theological Seminary opened up a new facility there in Arlington, and they invited us to be a part of what's going on there and are allowing us to use it on the weekends. So although we started services back in April at our home, we moved in about six weeks ago into the seminary there, and it's been amazing all of the people that God is already bringing. Although we haven't opened publicly, people just keep showing up on Sunday mornings at 9.30 a.m. at 5640 Airline Road, Arlington, Tennessee, 38002. And so we're so thankful to see what God has done. We have prayed so many big prayers over the last nine months, and God has been faithful to answer every single one of them, and part of that is through people like you. You have been amazing to send us texts and phone calls, emails, notes of encouragement in the mail, financial donations, and so much more. We're so thankful for your investment. We're thankful that God has grown our faith. We're thankful that we're more dependent upon him now than ever before. And so Noah just asked me if I could share just a little bit about how you could continue to pray for us, and I would just say four ways. Number one, would you please pray that God would prepare the hearts of the people that are gonna be there on that Sunday morning, that he would draw people from the north, south, east, and west, that they would hear the gospel of Jesus Christ, and they would be saved. Number two, would you pray for our launch team? We have about 60 people with us right now, but we're in need of more people to come alongside and help in all the different areas of the church, and so we're praying over the next three weeks that God would bring us 20 more people to help us start the church. So would you pray that God would provide those? And then obviously there's always financial needs. Would you just continue to pray that the Lord would provide all of those things? And then lastly, I would ask you to pray this, that the name of Derek Ewald and the name of Arlington Baptist Church would be torn down, and the name of Christ would be built up and exemplified. We pray he would get all the glory and all the praise, because at Arlington Baptist Church, we desire to glorify God, edify people, and multiply disciples and churches. Thank you, Bellevue. We love you. Awesome. It's been so encouraging. I talk to Derek probably two or three times a week, and I usually call him about 10 o'clock in the morning and ask him, did I wake you up? Because now that he doesn't have a real job, he's just driving to Alabama and picking up baptist trees and whatnot. But it's been so encouraging over the last nine months to see all the truly miraculous doors that God has opened on behalf of the church. And it's been so encouraging watching how his faith has grown, and my faith has grown watching. And I wanna encourage you, Bellevue. This is a church that has come out of Bellevue and is being birthed out of Bellevue. And we have a responsibility to support and to pray for this church and to not forget about those who are going out from among us. There's a famous mission story in Southern Baptist life with William Carey was going out into a difficult part of the world, and he was gonna be a pioneer in a certain type of missions and doing things. And he said, I forget the exact quote, but it was something along these lines. He was talking to a friend. They're wondering how I could get done. He said, hey, I'll go down into the pit. If you'll hold the rope. And so I wanna encourage you, we need to be holding the rope for the Ewalt family. We need to be holding the rope for the Stevenson family. And we need to be faithful while they're down and they're doing the work that God has called them to do, knowing that they are part of us and they have gone out on our behalf. We can't all go, we can't all do certain things, but we can support and be part of the work that they're doing. Danny, you work with churches all over the state, a lot of new churches and whatnot. Could you talk a little bit about the importance of supporting a church like Derrick's and encouraging him, whether that be even sending a text message or a letter in ways that we can practically even encourage a church planner? Yeah, I wanna just say too, how much I appreciate Dr. Ben Mandrell, who was a church planner, who understands the dynamic. It's counterintuitive for a church to give people away or for a church to give a lot of resources to go to another church. We've got mission issues going on here. So the connection that I wanna make, about 15 years ago, the Lord put it in our hearts to start a new church in Arlington because there wasn't a strong Bible preaching church in Arlington. There was a couple of smaller struggling churches. But so we sent about a hundred people down. We sent a hundred people 15 years ago. That church is Faith Baptist Arlington. This past Sunday, they had over 1,500 in worship. And Derrick was invited to go preach there recently. Some of the folks from Faith Baptist Arlington are now part of the core team, which is so much a joy for me to see that happen. And I think when you tell that story, what we don't need to miss is like we talked about, the unity of the church in Acts 9.31. Brian Carlyle, who's the pastor there at Faith Arlington, he does not view Derrick as competition. He doesn't view him as stealing his people. He invited him to come preach in the pulpit at Faith Arlington and is welcoming him into the city because there's so much need. And I think so often we look at churches and we go, well, we have so many churches, why do we need another one? But the need is so much greater than the churches. If we were able to reach the people in Arlington and Memphis and across Tennessee, the churches that we have today are not big enough and large enough to hold these people. And so we have quite a bit of need for more churches. Yeah, so the whole thought behind it is exactly what we see in the book of Acts. Just a couple of chapters away, in Acts 11, the church at Antioch was formed from people that were running from persecution that rose over the death of Stephen. And they didn't just keep everybody there in Acts 13. They sent away, you know, Paul and Silas or Paul and Barnabas and they began to start churches. And that's the history. That's how we got here, right? Is the Lord just continuing to bless and to put it in the hearts of his people, this gregarious, generous thing about, you know, giving your very best. And Bellevue has a history of that. And again, I just want to say, bless you, thank you, I'm so grateful. If I weren't the pastor emeritus of a little church down the street.

I'd be coming to sit with you guys at the chapel service on Wednesday nights all the time. But thank you for letting me come. Dr. Noah, thanks for the invitation. One of my new best friends, one of the great preachers and teachers here at Bellevue. And we love your staff, we love your pastor. We love you folks and we're so grateful for you. Yeah, and it's hard to realize it, but Bellevue is what, 123 years old at this point. And in 1903, Bellevue was a small mission planted church by Central Baptist Church in downtown Memphis. And they saw a need back then when we were kind of in the Midtown area on Bellevue Avenue. They saw a need as the city was expanding in that direction to plant a church in order to reach the people who were moving out East at the time. And because of their faithfulness, we're here tonight and we're able to then send out others as well. And it really is a beautiful picture of the unity that we have in the gospel and not the competition at all. And we're able to work well together. Danny, as we finish up tonight, I would love just a big old generic question. You can take it any direction you wanna go in. I would love to know what the Lord's been teaching you lately as you spend time in His word and as you're preaching these churches and however you wanna answer that. What's the Lord been doing in your heart? Yeah, so I may have mentioned a little bit of it. Something fresh and new for me, even this week, was just the reminder that we have limited time to do this work. And the urgency, I think the Holy Spirit has sparked in my heart a new sense of urgency for sharing the gospel personally, for cultivating friendships with some lost people. We Christians, we hang around other Christians a lot. And so we need to get to know some lost people every once in a while. But that's been a bit of a burden. And the other thing that I would say is for us just to be faithfully in love with Jesus. One of the things that I've always admired, loved about Dr. Rogers, man, he loved Jesus. You couldn't be around that man. And same is true for lots of godly men and pastors and people. But I just want us to have that. I want us to be so in love with Jesus that we're not afraid of anything this world has. We're not discouraged or distressed. Dr. Rogers would say about the days in which we're living, the world's growing gloriously dark. Perfect time to share the gospel, perfect time to be the salt and light, perfect time for the church to thrive. And so I think that's some of what the Lord is just reminding me about, encouraging me in. And just being reminded that there's an old hymn that says, let us labor for the master from the dawn till setting sun. And I guess when we get to a certain stage in life, that sun's setting kind of low right now. Some of us are in the fourth quarter maybe, but man, we want to win the game. We're on the winning team. We just want to run through the finish line. We want to finish strong. We want to make much of the name and fame of Jesus every day, every chance we have. Amen. In just a moment, we're gonna close in prayer. I'll give you that soon. I'm gonna ask you here in a moment to pray that verse for the churches in this area. I want to encourage you as you walk out, just like every week, there's those cards out there. I encourage you to pick one or two up and keep it with you this week and pray that for the churches in this area. And maybe even on the back, write the name of some specific churches that the Lord might put in your heart. I encourage Bellevue to be one of those. I encourage Arlington Baptist Church to be one of those as they get ready to launch here in a couple of weeks. And let's be faithful to continue to lift up the churches in this area. So here in just a moment, we're gonna do what we typically do. We're gonna pray at your seat and we're gonna pray through this verse and use it as a prayer guide. And then Brother Danny will close us out in prayer.