I first came to Grace in 2014. My wife and I had moved to Newton and I had heard about this guy named Dave Reimer. We decided to check his preaching out one Sunday as we were tired of driving to the church we had been going to in Wichita. The church we were driving to is now closed so I guess that means we made the right call!
We were welcomed by people right away, I won’t name names but they know who they are, and we later saw Pastor Kyle at Applebees. He and Mary were on a date night and I could tell he was cool (and he didn’t even bribe me to say this). I am a Moody Bible Institute grad though, so it’s tough to impress me with a church. Friendly people, pastors who are good husbands, and even good preaching would not have been enough to make me decide that Grace would be our church home. Don’t get me wrong all of those things were present at Grace and they all tipped the scales toward our decision to go here, but one of the biggest factors was that church planting was part of Grace’s history (recent history at that point) and it was still part of the DNA here. That’s something that will get a Moody Bible guy fired up!
At Moody, I learned to deeply and forever love the local church. It is without a doubt God’s most chosen vessel to use in the lives of His children throughout the world. Regardless of language, income, race, education level, or any other factor you can name God is at work in those people and in that place through His local church. Even in places with no Gospel presence, there are local churches in other parts of the world praying and working to get the Gospel there. While at Moody I did not know if I wanted to be a pastor or a missionary but either way I knew I wanted to be part of the local church or sent by the church to make churches where there weren’t any.
So when we came to Grace in 2014 and I heard about the church plants in Hillsboro (Grace Fellowship) and Moundridge (Grace Crossing) that were a few years old by then and the brand new one (New Anthem) that was just launched by a basketball player I knew from the area who graduated from high school the same year I did… To say the least I was elated! I knew that God was at work at Grace Newton if He was mobilizing this place to be a sending church for new church plants. We had found our church home, done deal!
Fast forward and long story short my wife and I felt called back to Grace after years of Christian camp ministry in Michigan. We are so glad to be back! One of the sweetest full-circle moments we have experienced is getting to attend the 10 yr anniversaries of both the Moundridge and Hillsboro churches this past year. We were here when those church plants were new in the 2012-2014 years. God brought us back in 2021 and then in 2022, their 10 yr anniversaries started! What a gift to see the good work still going! Most church plants don’t last long, I don’t know the exact stats but it's probably 1-2 yrs… To have two that have lasted 10 yrs and a third (in Park City) that will hit that milestone next January is an obvious affirmation of God’s direction and provision. God will grow, God will reproduce, and God will protect His local church!
Another fun connection for me was when the Admin Director from the camp I worked at in Michigan started dating this guy from Ohio. Boy meets girl, they get married, he is a pastor… and they were the planters of our most recent church in Lyons KS (Kings Cross) in 2020. Her husband had spoken at camp many times while I was there too so both of us couples, one in 2020 and the other in 2021 left the mild summers and snowy winters of Kalamazoo to come to these great plains to work at churches.
In between those first three plants and this most recent one Grace also helped plant a church in Bolivia and in the near future, and for the first time in my pastoral ministry, I will get to see us help plant a church in our neighboring burb of Eldorado. This is so much more goodness than I deserve to even be witness to… let alone get to be a part of in our Synergy Kansas church planting meetings.
This is a long story and you have been patient to read it but I would ask that you ditch patience… get impatient! Get impatient to see more churches planted! If all the people even in our small town came to know Jesus we would not have enough seats in all the churches combined to give them a place to sit on a Sunday morning! That doesn’t factor in that Newton is probably going to grow and if we don’t surrounding towns will. With 8 billion people in the world, we are plenty of seats short and the gap is broadened if we are hoping for people to have a healthy, Gospel-centered, Bible-preaching church to attend. We have to get busy planting because God is already busy drawing people to Himself. Jesus’ kingdom is what we are supposed to seek first (Matt. 6:33) and if we convince other people to follow Jesus we have to be planting churches so that they can grow themselves and do the same for others. God loves His local church and He will plant more of them whether we join Him or not but I am definitely hitched up and ready for the ride! I hope you are too!
Will Regier