Why Plant in Wyoming?
Jeff and Beth stand outside the location of their public opening for Thunder Basin Community Church on January 22nd, 2023.
“When I looked around the room, I saw a bunch of outsiders like me.” A guest visiting our church plant, Thunder Basin Community Church, shared this quote with our church planters, Jeff & Beth Newcomer, at their Christmas Eve service. She wanted them to know how needed this new church was for their community. What’s incredible to me is how Jeff literally used those same words years earlier to explain why God was leading him to start a church. He felt like an outsider before trusting in Jesus. Today God is using the Newcomers to start a new church in Upton, Wyoming by reaching the outsider. And God is also using Anthem Church to be a part of this incredible story of life transformation.
KEEP READING TO LEARN: (1) How we began, (2) How we prepared them, (3) What God is doing now, (4) How to pray.
(1) HOW WE BEGAN: Before we started Anthem, we dreamed of planting pregnant. In other words, we believed a healthy church plant would be a reproducing church. So we prayed, but had no real plan until I met Jeff in the fall of 2020. We had just started inviting Christians to form a launch team to plant our church. Jeff shared how God was leading him and his wife Beth to also start a church in the future, and so they wanted to help us and gain ministry experience with us. With only a handful of people at that point, Ligaya and I were ecstatic to see God build a launch team with someone called to plant a future church. God then performed a series of miracles (which the Newcomers explained here and here) over the next year that led to the baptism of their friends. This moment not only transformed their friend’s lives, but reignited Jeff & Beth’s conviction to start a church by making disciplemakers.
(2) HOW WE PREPARED THEM: We spent a year partnering with Jeff & Beth to start Anthem Church before sending them to plant a church. Our brief year together prepared them, and showed us how God can use our little church to raise-up and send out church planters by our commitment to make and multiply disciplemakers. Looking back, our process began in the fall of 2020 as Jeff and I began meeting to talk through Jesus’ command for every Christian to go and make disciplemakers. Our coaching conversations prompted him to start praying about who God was leading him to care for and to share the gospel with in the places where he lived, worked, learned and played. Throughout the winter of 2021, Jeff was faithful to love his neighbors until a supernatural moment arrived when God used Jeff to lead his friend, Steve, to follow Jesus. Then Jeff started helping Steve grow in his relationship to Jesus, which formed into a ministry partnership as they served together at Anthem. So when Jeff & Beth were sent to start a church in the summer of 2021, they were sad to leave, but prepared to go and excited to see what God would do in Upton like what He did in Bellevue. Then God performed another series of miracles that led to the summer of 2022 when Anthem sent yet another family to join the Newcomers in Wyoming. As you might of guessed, this time it was Steve and his family. We believe as our church remains committed to Jesus’ call of making disciplemakers, we can expect new communities to form, and multiply into what results in more exciting stories of church planting initiatives like this.
(3) WHAT GOD IS DOING NOW: God is doing a great work in our city, our region, and our world. As John 12:12 reads, “Truly, truly, I say to you, whoever believes in me will also do the works that I do; and greater works than these will he do, because I am going to the Father.” I’m witnessing this in our city as God transforms lives, which recently happened in dramatic fashion with someone new to Anthem, who decided to follow Jesus. I’m also hearing encouraging reports from our church plant in Wyoming as God has grown their weekly gathering from 30 attending on their public opening to now over 60 people a few weeks ago. For a town of 1,000 people and churches averaging 30 in attendance, we’re amazed at the great work God is doing in Upton, Wyoming. Then, if that was not enough, I was reminded by Nate Hettinga of Converge Northwest of a couple I met at Jeff and Beth’s church planting assessment in 2021. This Filipino couple is currently living on the other side of the world in Saipon, but they are praying and preparing to start church in our region by reaching the Filipino community. As they make plans to move here, we are praying about how our young church could become a support and encouragement to this couple and their church planting initiative.
(3) HOW TO PRAY: This work is greater than any one of us, and requires us to pray. I was reminded of this when I heard that a pastor had been praying for years for a new church to start in the region where Jeff & Beth eventually planted their church. And not only that, but a number of people from the Upton community had been praying for a church like Thunder Basin Community Church to form. Let’s continue to pray for God to lead us to fulfill His calling for our church, and towards His mission of making disciples of all people groups. Pray that every disciple of Jesus at Anthem Church would have the privilege of making 3 disciples of Jesus in their first 5 years with us. God is faithful. We trust Him. So let’s expect Him to continue to do a great work in Anthem Church, as well as through our daughter church, Thunder Basin Community Church, and, Lord willing, through some future church planting initiatives.