FBC Crosbyton experiences “almost 100%” growth through PAVE, partnering with Ukrainian church-start

“Hey, there's a trip leaving for Seattle in two weeks, and we're going to go meet some church planters,” was Mark Davis’ invitation from a pastor friend four months into his pastorate at First Baptist Church Crosbyton. 

Since stepping into his role in July 2022, Davis had been praying for opportunities for the church to become a place that is full of life after it saw only two baptisms the previous year.

“It was so clear that this county is ripe for the harvest and that the church had an incredible opportunity to be at the center of that, to be a place that is filled with life and baptisms and joy and people who love each other and people who are growing in Christ. But when [my family] got here, the church was a little bit down,” said Davis. 

Prior to Davis’ arrival, FBC Crosbyton faced “severe storm damage” that left the church “in a state of mourning and a bit of destitution” as they were forced to meet in a different facility for six months as the building was being repaired. 

Kris Knippa, Area 1 representative for Texas Baptists, said one of his “most satisfying experiences as an area representative” is tied to FBC Crosbyton, as he served as the interim pastor before Davis was called. He said in the wake of the storm damage and pastor search, he asked the congregation to “be prayerful” that the Lord would “inspire a desire [in someone] to want to become their next pastor.” 

The congregation took this encouragement seriously, and Knippa noticed a shift in their spirit. 

“Getting back to their worship facility, and rebuilding their fellowship hall, was the first step in determining that their plan to build back better was not only reserved for the building itself, [but that]... the building would be the place that God would use for his will to be done,” explained Knippa. “The prayerful spirit of the congregation demonstrated that they were a people who desired to walk in step with the Holy Spirit, even though they realized this would likely lead to significant changes in how they had traditionally practiced church life together.” 

When Davis was called to be their pastor, he saw a need for a change. 

“[The church] needed to be reminded of who they were and the power that our God has. So how do you do that? How do you bring life back? You evangelize… and then you get outside of your context and you remind yourself of the global kingdom,” said Davis.

Being molded by the mission 

Davis considered that the vision trip to Seattle might be a “good opportunity to connect us with a church outside of our context so that we can start to build a relationship… where we have a staff that we pray for and we're supporting financially, but also that we're able to send people there and allow them to be molded by the mission.”

“What we say to our church is, ‘If you see the Spirit of God moving, you run to that,’” said Davis. 

So, he took the trip, met with church planters and visited their facilities. He brought back “profiles and notes from conversations that I had with the church planters” to pray over and ask, “‘God, who is it that you're leading us to? What is it that you want us to do with this?’” 

As they prayed, God began to burden their hearts for Ivan Shepel, pastor of Bellevue Bible Church in Seattle. 

“[Ivan is] a Ukrainian pastor [and] he planted a Russian speaking church at the very beginning… [of] the war that's going on, and to see that there was a body of believers that is helping refugees from both sides, that is leading people to Christ from both countries, that is doing a work very much like the New Testament in the book of Acts with the Jews and Gentiles, but with Russians and Ukrainians… choosing to worship together… it's unifying for the body,” explained Davis. “Why would you not want to be involved in something like that and have your people be molded by that?”

Davis said the connection his staff felt to Bellevue “was a clear God thing,” so they started considering how they could spend more time getting to know and investing in the church.

In January 2023, FBC Crosbyton began sending financial support and, in September that year, sent their first team to Seattle to “love and encourage” Shepel’s congregation and spend some time “doing the work for the kingdom together.” The team attended a Ukrainian festival in the area and did some evangelism with Bellevue members. 

In September 2024, they sent another team and invited a team from Bellevue to visit Crosbyton in hopes of making it an annual thing to “be molded by each other.”

“A lot of times we forget [how great God is] whenever we're down in the rut, but getting outside of our own context opens our eyes to who God is and what he's doing,” said Davis.

He said partnering with Bellevue Bible Church has sparked “a burden for missions” within his congregation, which has “opened up more missions opportunities,” such as serving with Texas Baptists’ River Ministry, a ministry that connects churches to specific service projects along the Texas/Mexico border. 

“It had been a while since we had sent a mission team anywhere, and so now the fact that we're even talking about [it] was really exciting for the church and [they had] all kinds of questions whenever we got back,” explained Davis. 

Davis recalled from his time in PAVE, a Texas Baptists ministry designed to help pastors customize revitalization for their context, in 2023, that pastors were challenged to take unique moments in their church and use them strategically to “expand their impact.” He accepted that challenge by leaning into his congregation’s curiosity about the Seattle trips. 

“[We showed] two videos of people who went on the trip talking about them [on] different weeks,” said Davis. “[Then] we just talked about it week after week after week and shared different elements of the trips that we took.” 

“One of the coolest” moments from the two trips to Bellevue Bible Church was one of a 15-year-old student sharing his testimony of coming to know Jesus, then leading his mom, sister and best friend to Christ “within the next year.” 

“There's just a ton of testimony [being shared]. You have people standing up and sharing their testimony in Ukrainian, and some of the brothers and sisters are translating for us in English. Then you have people from our church going up and sharing in English, and they're translating into Russian for them,” said Davis. “[But] no matter what language you speak or where you're born, the whole room is weeping and praising God for it. So, God's definitely moving through [our] relationship [with Bellevue]. It's incredible to see.” 

Celebrating new life with a birthday party  

Davis is also “expanding the impact” of how God is moving by focusing on the baptism strategy he learned in PAVE. He said Jonathan Smith, director of Church Health and Growth at Texas Baptists, introduced the idea of “stretching out” baptisms by promoting and emphasizing them on Sunday mornings. FBC Crosbyton adopted this strategy and developed a unique way to celebrate each baptism. 

“We announce and we promote the baptism a week before we have the baptism, and we put on the testimony video [before they are baptized]. Then immediately after that service, we have a meal… We turned it into a little bit of a birthday party because I figured it's a new life. It's a new birth. So we buy a birthday cake and we put ‘Happy Baptism Day whoever's getting baptized,’” explained Davis. 

He said it’s a “time of joy” for the church family, but the celebration doesn’t stop there. The week following a baptism, the new believer gets a cross put on the “Resurrection Wall.”. 

“[The Resurrection Wall sign] has so much symbolism in it. It’s made from scrap wood that had no use… It's stained dark to represent our sin and then in just pure white, maple untouched wood is the word ‘Resurrection’ and it's like a 3D effect coming out of the darkness,” explained Davis. “[The church member who made it] was so upset when she made it because those letters were pure white [but] she couldn't figure out how to cover up the nail holes… and I was like, ‘No, don't cover up the nail holes that represents the nails that Jesus took for us [on the cross].’” 

Davis said hanging the crosses in the rebuilt fellowship hall where the birthday parties take place allows the gospel to be “more prevalent in our minds.”

Evangelistic fervor and “almost 100%” growth

By putting his PAVE training into practice, “evangelistic fervor” has sparked in Davis’ congregation, according to Knippa, growing by “almost 100% in just over two years” since he began pastoring FBC Crosbyton.

Davis said the PAVE principle “if you can explain what you're doing, God's not the one doing it” has become the banner of the church. 

“We haven't put a strategy in place for [evangelism]; people are just telling their friends about Jesus. They're just inviting them to church. They're choosing to spend time together outside of the church doing real life discipleship, having gospel conversations around the dinner table regularly,” said Davis. “I smile every time I see our church eat together, every time I see people fellowshipping… that God has brought together and called to himself. That's so beautiful.”

Visit txb.org/pave to learn more about PAVE and how it can be a resource to your congregation.