Texan takes Northwest church starting to new High Pointe
___By Mark Wingfield
___Managing Editor
___PUYALLUP, Wash.--Kevin Sullivan's quest to start a large Baptist church in the Northwest began when a seminary professor made him mad.
___Sullivan, a CPA who at the time was controller for Second Baptist Church in Houston, was attending classes at Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary. In a missions class,
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TEXAN Kevin Sullivan, shown here in his Puyallup neighborhood in the shadow of Mount Rainier, has started a Seattle-area church that has grown to more than 500 people in less than a year.
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Professor Ebbie Smith showed his students a map of the United States and pointed to the Northwest.
___"This is not an area where it's easy to start a large church," Sullivan recalls Smith saying. "But some of you need to be here."
___"He ticked me off," Sullivan recalled, noting that as a member of a mega-church, he often felt his professors and classmates demonstrated a bias against large churches.
___Although it wasn't until some time later that Sullivan identified his call to become a church starter in the Northwest, he silently took Smith's words as a personal challenge.
___As someone who had spent his career dealing with numbers, Sullivan was shocked by the statistics he learned about the Northwest, which is perhaps the most unchurched region of the United States. "I saw the challenge," he said.
___He went home and on his refrigerator posted a map of the United States with the Northwest colored in. Then he and his wife, Nancy, began praying.
___Eventually they decided to make what he calls a "courtesy visit" to the Northwest. He was keenly aware of the needs but didn't want to be the one God used to meet those needs.
___His wife, he is quick to report, was more open to God's leading than he was.
___After leaders of Puget Sound Baptist Association showed the Sullivans around the metropolitan Seattle area, they finally acknowledged this was where God was calling them to serve. Specifically, they felt called to the booming area south of Seattle near Puyallup and Tacoma.
___For the first three months, the Texas couple went door-to-door seeking input from residents about whether they went to church, what they would like in a church and whether they would like to join a new Bible study. To everyone who responded, they gave a bag of Starbucks coffee.
___In September 1999, they began a Bible study in their home and called it "The Gathering." They provided food for everyone, activities for children at a nearby community center and Bible study for adults.
___The Bible study grew to about 70 people before it was moved from their house to the community center. Meanwhile, they began to have a series of once-a-month launch services for the church. The services were announced by a massive community mailing.
___At the first service, 206 people showed up to hear former Dallas Cowboy Steve Pelluer speak. Attendance continued to grow until the official launch service last Easter Sunday, when 450 people came.
___The new church "settled in" with about 250 regular attenders after that, Sullivan said. But growth has continued each week, with more than 500 attending weekly services now.
___That makes High Pointe Community Church, though less than a year old, one of the largest churches in the Northwest Baptist Convention.
___Perhaps up to 75 percent of those attending come from unchurched backgrounds, Sullivan said. Already the church has baptized 82 people and ranks among the top 10 Northwest Baptist Convention churches in baptisms.
___Sullivan freely admits he is not the secret ingredient in this success story. "It's been so much God and so little me," he said.
___Much of what he has contributed, however, is based on what he learned at Second Baptist Church of Houston, he explained. "If I'd come up here on my seminary training alone, I'd have died."
___The contemporary church start has received about $500,000 in support from individual members of Second Baptist Church, as well as from other Texans. It also received a large boost from the Southern Baptist Convention's North American Mission Board, which broke its normal funding pattern to give the Seattle church start $200,000.
___As an accountant, Sullivan had run the numbers early on and knew what it would take to launch a church of this magnitude. Getting the right amount of start-up funding made the strong start possible, he insisted.
___"I'm able to wake up in the morning and worry about nothing but this ministry," he explained. "I don't have to worry about how I'm going to buy shoes for my kids."
___Thanks to the support of Texas Baptists and NAMB, High Pointe has become one of the most successful church starts in the history of the Northwest Baptist Convention--and a model for other new churches as well.
___Volunteers are needed to help put on sports camps this summer, to perform random acts of Christian kindness as an evangelistic outreach and to do more door-to-door surveying.
___And the Sullivans desire the prayers of Texas Baptists as well to undergird their ministry.
___He especially requested prayer for the leadership void the church is experiencing. "We've gone from 30 people to 500, and we need small-group leaders," he explained.
___Likewise, Texas Baptists should pray for those attending the new church to experience a growth in their commitment to the church, Sullivan said. The concepts of regular attendance and financial support are new.
___To assist High Pointe Church, contact Sullivan by calling (253) 840-1650 or sending e-mail to kevin@highpointechurch.org.
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The Baptist Standard
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