Tennessee Baptist leaders, from left, Micah Stephens, Jonathan Chapman,
Cole Rogers and Chad Mize discuss the importance of a ministry
pipeline during a recent video shoot.
FRANKLIN — Chad Mize and Jonathan Chapman are doing their part to ensure that the circle remains unbroken.
Mize, associate pastor of missions and mobilization at Forest Hills Baptist Church, and Chapman, collegiate ministry specialist at East Tennessee State University, are both passionate and committed to helping aspiring church leaders find reliable and godly “ministry mentors.”
Eventually, if all goes according to plan, those same students will then help others follow that path.
It’s a cycle of events that is crucial to the future of student ministry, said Chapman. With the pipeline of rising ministry leaders slowing almost to a trickle in recent years, this is a vital time for new leaders to emerge.
Chapman said Tennessee Baptists can aid the process, and infuse the cycle, by supporting the BCMs in Tennessee, both with prayer and financial resources.
“As Tennessee Baptists give through the Cooperative Program and the Golden Offering for Tennessee Missions, they make it possible for BCMs to disciple students and also to send them back out as leaders into the local churches here in Tennessee — and also around the world,” said Chapman.
Mize and Chapman recently watched “the circle of (ministry) life” unfold in front of them.
The story starts when Cole Rogers, now the collegiate ministry specialist at Belmont, was serving on staff at Forest Hills.
“While I was interning in the student ministry at Forest Hills (Baptist Church), I began to have conversations with Chad about what would it look like for me to go into ministry,” said Rogers. “I felt like God was pulling me in that direction, but I didn’t really know what that would look like.”
Mize helped Rogers get connected with Chapman, who ultimately offered Rogers a job with the ETSU BCM.
Rogers
“Cole came to our BCM at a pivotal time,” said Chapman. “We had been growing — literally doubling — in the last two years before he arrived. Cole becoming our campus minister was incredible because he was able to have so much impact on our students, not only from an evangelistic standpoint but from a discipleship standpoint.”
In October of 2021, shortly after Rogers finished seminary, an opportunity came open at Belmont University, and Rogers took a position with the school in Nashville.
Meanwhile, back at ETSU, the Lord was working in the heart of Micah Stephens, an ETSU student was feeling a call to the ministry.
One day, Stephens was sitting in Chapman’s office — “pouring my heart out,” as he described it — about his desire to see what being in the ministry was really about. During this meeting, Chapman received an e-mail from Mize, asking if he had any students who were wanting to learn “how to do ministry.”
Chapman replied that, yes, as a matter of fact, he did have just such a student. “And he’s sitting right in front of me,” he told Mize.
Stephens soon began a ministry residence at Forest Hills, and he started connecting with BCMs across Tennessee, including working with Rogers for various events at Belmont.
What makes this interesting is the fact that, several years earlier — when Rogers was at ETSU — he had discipled Stephens, meeting with him each week and showing him “what it looked like to be a young man who had responded to the Lord’s call to ministry.”
From Mize to Chapman to Rogers to Stephens — the circle was unbroken.
“The investments from the people at BCM and other students around me altered the course of my life forever,” said Stephens. “(They) helped me respond positively to what the Lord was doing in my life.”
Mize said this exactly what he hopes to see happen over and over again across Tennessee and elsewhere.
“At Forest Hills, we’ve always believed in collaborative ministry through our local conventions, and the Tennessee Baptist Mission Board has really served as a catalyst for equipping those we’ve sent out and also discipling those we’ve sent to college campuses,” he said. “And with this story, we really see all sides of that equation work for the glory of God and the furthering of the gospel.” B&R
