Volunteers' 23-hour, 1,400-mile treks to the Northeast yield church planting gains

Four years before Send North America was launched by the North American Mission Board to mobilize churches and local associations to plant and support new churches in underserved parts of the United States, Todd Unzicker was down in the Florida panhandle doing it.

In 2007, Unzicker, 31 at the time, came to Bonifay, Fla. -- located just off I-10 about 50 miles north of Panama City -- as one of the youngest directors of missions in the Southern Baptist Convention.

Bonifay is the county seat for Holmes County, one of Florida's most rural and poorest counties. Only some 19,000 residents live in the county. At the time, the Holmes Baptist Association consisted of just 29 churches, and 25 of those had bivocational pastors.

"Our largest church was First Baptist in Bonifay, running about 400 on Sundays," Unzicker said. "There are four or five churches in the 75- to 100-person range and most of the other churches probably average under 50. Several churches run less than 25 people."

Unzicker is walking, talking proof that churches of all sizes -- even those in an area like Holmes County -- can plant churches if they are willing to cooperate and combine resources. To read more, click here.

If Southern Baptists can work together to plant and grow new churches, so can Anglicans. It boils down to having a missionary mindset and being open to God's leading.