Church Ministries Conference in Grand Rapids, Mich.
GRAND RAPIDS, Mich.—A conference sponsored by the Grand Rapids Association of Regular Baptist Churches has become an annual destination for many Sunday School teachers and lay workers in Grand Rapids churches. About 700 attended this year’s event at Calvary Baptist Church, participating in 75 workshops covering a variety of instructional and practical topics.
“We are not building organizations and buildings,” Dr. Jim Jeffery said during his opening sermon. “We are building people.”
Jim Jeffery was no stranger to the people at Calvary Baptist—he was pastor there for 12 years. Now president of Baptist Bible College, Clarks Summit, Pa., he returned to his former church to encourage church members to a greater ministry of service.
“Too many people come to church expecting to ‘get’ something. ‘I’ll just sit here and evaluate the sermon and the worship to see if there is anything I like.’ But the Old Testament Jews did not come to the temple to ‘get’ something. They came to sacrifice,” Jeffery says.
The conference is organized by a 12-person committee from area churches: Pastor Jeff Burr and Pastor Craig Perry, Forest Hills Baptist; Carol DeClark, Highland Hills Baptist; Pastor Dan Fullmer, Rice Lake Baptist; Pastor Chad Vitarelli and Dave Gavette, Calvary Baptist; Pastor Jeff Gunderman, Berlin Baptist; Pastor Brian Harrison, Alaska Baptist; Pastor Ray Paget, Grand Haven Community Baptist; Terre Ritchie, CBH Ministries; Pastor Ken Vanderwest, Kent City Baptist; and Pastor John Watson, Standale Baptist.
Pastor Ken Vanderwest says the key to the event’s success is its low cost to church members, who pay $25 to attend the entire weekend. As a result, the conference organizers have discovered that 20 percent of their attendance is from pastors, and 80 percent from lay workers in about 100 local churches.
The conference started in the early 1970s, originally led by Calvary Baptist’s Christian education pastor, Dann Austin. Now Dann is seminary chaplain and professor of church education at Baptist Bible College, but he returns most years to the event he helped start.
The Grand Rapids Association of Regular Baptist Churches has a storied history, separating from a liberal association of churches in 1909 and changing its name to include “Regular Baptist” in 1928. Now the association has 70 churches in a region that includes Lansing and Kalamazoo. Most of these churches are also in fellowship with the national GARBC.
- Read more about the conference at www.churchministriesconference.com.
