Women on Mission - November Update

First Baptist Women on Mission learned about efforts to plant churches in the Cincinnati, Ohio, area when Oliver Hawkins spoke to the group on Nov. 10. A Kentucky native and Baptist minister's son, Oliver has been with the North American Mission Board (NAMB) for 19 years and serves under the SEND Network, stressing evangelism and the planting of new churches. He previously served with the International Mission Board in China. After leaving China, he joined the staff of the Baptist Association of Greater Cincinnati in 2006 as a strategist for the Ministry of Evangelism. Since 2015 Oliver has served as the NAMB church planting catalyst for SEND Cincinnati.

The SEND Network focuses on mobilizing existing churches and helping them plant churches in the United States, Canada, and the U.S. territories. Through its SENDing Lab, NAMB teaches local pastors and their leadership teams to see that they can plant a church. With 750-900 Southern Baptist churches closing each year (due to dwindling congregations and no younger people to carry on), the need is great to plant churches to keep up with population growth and the loss from churches closing, Oliver said. The desire is to help existing church properties continue as churches after an older Southern Baptist church closes.

In Ohio, Oliver noted, there is one Southern Baptist Church for every 18,495 people, compared to Georgia where there is one Southern Baptist church for every 3,154 people in the state. Georgia saw 90 church plants in 2024.

Oliver shared about six families in the Cincinnati area — led in part by a former bank executive, a university professor, and a Lifeway employee — who will be planting new churches and leading them in the next two years, including in Spanish-speaking, Congolese, Nepalese, Vietnamese, and Ghanan communities among the 52 neighborhoods in Cincinnati.

The strategy used is SEND In: Engage the city with the gospel, make disciples, plant a church, send out. "It no longer works to just put up a sign for a new church and expect people to come," Oliver said. "We now have to engage with people, first with the gospel through various events."

More than 100 churches have been planted since SEND Network started its work in Cincinnati, Oliver said. SEND hopes to see another 200 planted over the next two years with a goal of catalyzing at least four church planters each year. By the year 2030, one-third of all Southern Baptist churches in Ohio will have been planted since 2010.

Half of SEND Cincinnati's budget is funded through the Annie Armstrong Easter Offering in which First Baptist Blairsville participates, the other half through private donations and the Cooperative Program, in which First Baptist ranks third in Georgia in giving.

College students aid in these effort through GEN SEND, where they spend summer in a city, working as a group. For the past five years, Oliver said college students have helped church planters in Cincinnati by searching for new areas to plant churches, teaching the students to think like missionaries and to think about that would work in one neighborhood versus another.

Oliver also referenced SEND Relief, a collaboration between the International Mission Board and NAMB. SEND Relief is the Southern Baptist Convention's global compassion ministry, responding to crises and ministering to vulnerable communities throughout the world by meeting physical and spiritual needs in Jesus' name. SEND Relief has 20 ministry centers throughout the United States, including in Atlanta.

In December, the WOM program will highlight missionary Lottie Moon and the preparation of missionaries prior to being sent overseas and how that has changed over the years. The meeting on Monday, Dec. 8, will begin at 11:30 a.m. with a covered-dish luncheon in the Buchanan Hall at First Baptist followed by the program at noon.