History

The River is part of a new mission effort in the southwestern U.S. and Mexico appropriately named Tex-Mex. In May of 2001 General Baptist National, International and Executive directors as well as Mexico missionaries Mark and Sherrie Yates chose El Paso as a home base for their mission volunteers program designed to help meet the many needs of Northern Mexico residents. In conjunction with this plan a new church in El Paso would be born to bring the good news of Jesus to the sprawling number of new residents on the East Side. A house was purchased in El Paso to house the volunteer mission teams and in May of 2003 Mark and Sherrie Yates were the first to move onto the new field. Plans to bring the first team were almost finalized with exception of one empty seat. It seemed as though no one with mission experience was available for the trip.

I was the pastor of a church in my home town of about 3,000 people Ava, Missouri. My wife Wendee and I grew up in Ava, fell in love began to raise a family and entered the ministry. We were comfortable there and the church I pastored had grown tremendously, but I remember reading a comment once that said God is more concerned with your character than your comfort. How true!!! My wife and I both felt God was telling us that some day he wanted us to plant a church, we didn’t think it was anything urgent and dreamed of larger cities within a few hundred miles.

I was working at home one day when the phone rang and I was asked to go on our Churches first mission trip to Mexico. The program coordinator said that we had never met and He couldn’t even remember how he got my name, but he was confident that he was supposed to invite me, even though I had no previous experience. Wendee and I directed a youth camp the same month as the trip and she was 8mo pregnant with our fourth child, so I had to say, SURE! When I arrived at the airport Johnny Hibbs, the missionary leading the trip, told me about El Paso and that many people had been praying for the right pastor to see the same need for a new church on the East Side. I can’t quite explain what begin to happen inside of my wife and I at that moment, excitement, intense fear, curiosity, it was quite unlike any emotion we had ever experienced. Wendee nor I could even sleep that night before I left. After arriving in El Paso nameless faces that had been flashing through my mind suddenly came to life and I lost my heart I knew that God was telling my family and I to move and start this new church. A couple days latter I called Wendee (very pregnant by this point) to tell her about the City. Immediately she said, “I have something to tell you, we are supposed to go to El Paso and start the new church, I haven’t slept for days thinking about it.” To make a long story short, within 7 weeks we were residents of El Paso with a two week old baby girl.

God has prepared many more people for this work and it has been our joy meeting each one of them so far. In October Lonnie Crim became the second staff member of the River, he and his wife Pamela moved from Dallas and have doubled our effectiveness. August 1, is the scheduled launch date for the river, we are excited about all the possibilities, and trust in the promise Jesus gave us, “I will build my church and the gates of Hell shall not prevail against it.”