Pastor Allan Greer of Parkway Place Baptist Church (PPBC) in Arkansas, will boldly share his life purpose: “To love people where they are and help them take their next step with Christ.”
Early in his leadership, the Little Rock pastor recognized that part of taking that “next step” was internal, by examining the health of his own church and finding a strategy that would last.
“Our church was declining,” he recalls. “We had lost our focus and needed to come back to a place of health.”
Now, after years of implementing the Purpose Driven (PD) Church model, PPBC has been grounded on the five purposes, and even serves as a coaching church to ministry leaders across Arkansas and Texas. But it wasn’t until attending PEACE training at Saddleback’s Rancho Capistrano Retreat Center that Pastor Allan caught the vision for impacting other nations.
In an effort to see the results firsthand, he attended the 2016 All-Africa Pastors Gathering in Kigali, Rwanda. The event brought everyone together – including African leaders and international partnering churches (IPCs) to introduce the eight-month PD Essentials Training. It was a chance to demonstrate how PD and PEACE would work in other countries, with coaching, training, and mentoring from IPCs.
During that visit, Pastor Allan was introduced to three delegates from Zambia, and left feeling encouraged to partner with the English-speaking, East African nation.
“It really clicked for me,” recalls Pastor Allan. “I had an immediate passion to work together. So I came home and asked our congregation if our church would like to partner with Zambia. They responded with a resounding ‘yes’.”
“It really clicked for me,” recalls Pastor Allan. “I had an immediate passion to work together. So I came home and asked our congregation if our church would like to partner with Zambia.