Churches must revive passion for winning souls, Arkansas conference declares.
By Bobby Ross Jr. | The Christian Chronicle
LITTLE ROCK, Ark. — The vision for ReMission started small.
Eager to lead souls to Jesus and refocus Christians’ hearts and minds on that mission, a group of preacher friends decided to gather.
“It was just going to be a few guys together, and then more people heard about it: ‘Well, can I come, too?’” said Rick Atchley, senior minister for The Hills Church of Christ in North Richland Hills, Texas, northeast of Fort Worth.
Thus developed a hastily arranged two-day meeting last year that drew about 300 ministers, leaders and spouses to the Pleasant Valley Church of Christ in Little Rock.
Related: The road to ReMission
“There’s something that happens when people get on the same page,” said Tiffany Malone, a member of ReMission’s vision team and a church planter with her husband, Jerome, in Athens, Ala. “You can begin to see the seeds of that … forming as God is doing something really, really amazing.”
Those seeds led to a second annual conference in Arkansas’ largest city — with nearly double the first-year attendance.
In all, 586 people from 168 congregations in 23 states came together on a recent Monday and Tuesday.More than 650 registered in advance, but ice storms disrupted travel plans for so me Christians in the Carolinas, Tennessee and Mississippi.
The Pleasant Valley church again hosted ReMission. Attendees included the Bible deans of seven universities associated with Churches of Christ.
“It may have been an historic session,” Leonard Allen, dean of the College of Ministry and Bible at Lipscomb University in Nashville, Tenn., said of the deans’ panel discussion. “At least I’ve not heard of such an event in my lifetime.”
This story appears in the March print edition of The Christian Chronicle.
Photo by Glen Laird
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