NEW PALESTINE — A photo from a couple of years ago showed a congregation gathered in front of a small, deteriorating building with a tin roof.
Today that congregation in Bangladesh worships in a new building with red brick foundation and cream-colored stucco walls.
Thousands of miles away, in Uganda, daylight streams though nearly a dozen doors and open-shuttered windows on another congregation seated in rows of chairs on a concrete floor.
Both buildings were constructed with contributions from Brookville Road Community Church in New Palestine. It’s one of many churches partnering with International Cooperating Ministries. Through contributions from individual donors and churches, the organization based in Hampton, Virginia, works to raise buildings for churches in 96 countries, according to its website.
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Kris Sorensen, lead pastor of Brookville Road Community Church, learned about ICM from individuals from the congregation who knew about it and contribute to church buildings on their own. He began researching it and felt its mission and vision were similar to his church’s.
The church funded a building for Bugeso Baptist Church in Uganda in 2017. A team of youth were planning a mission trip to the country, so Sorensen said it made sense for Brookville Road to help build a church in the same country.
“You try to find these opportunities for synergy when it comes to mission work,” he said. “It means more … we think of the individuals.”
In 2018 the church funded a building for Gilead Baptist Church in Bangladesh, the congregation Sorensen saw in that photo in front of the small tin-roofed building. This year, Brookville Road has plans to help build three houses of worship in India.
Before its building goes up, a church must have the deed to the land where it will be built. The congregation provides some of the construction labor, sometimes helps pay for materials, and commits to start five more churches over the next three years.
“One of the things I like about ICM is the level of accountability they have,” Sorensen said. “100 percent of what we give goes to the church that is being constructed … ICM also has representatives that are on the ground making sure that everything is appropriate, that monies aren’t being used improperly.”
ICM was started in 1986 by Dois Rosser Jr., a layman who wanted to make copies of the Rev. Dick Woodward’s Mini Bible College available in translated copies for training indigenous pastors overseas. That mission expanded as Rosser learned more about churches meeting without buildings and how doable it would be to help fund those buildings.
A church building in India costs about $11,500, while churches in Africa or Latin America normally cost around $16,000, said Jim Thompson, national director of field development for ICM.
They’re made of brick or blocks, with a metal roof, on a solid foundation that’s normally concrete, he said. Then they’re stuccoed and painted. ICM provides engineering expertise to make sure buildings will meet local codes.
In some parts of the world, a building offers a church greater permanency and legitimacy, Sorensen said.
Thompson said churches without buildings often meet under trees or out in the open, or perhaps in a storefront. Those Christians are sometimes laughed at by people of other faiths, who say “Your God must not be very powerful” if the church doesn’t have a building, he said.
“To have a permanent site to worship in … gives them a legitimacy,” he said.
Tim Parsons, lead pastor of Center Point Church in Lexington, Kentucky, points out that church buildings provide safety in areas dominated by gangs or in countries where prosyletizing is illegal. His church, which meets in rented buildings, began celebrating its own anniversary each year by paying for churches overseas.
He emphasizes that contributions go to church buildings because founder Rosser has paid the salaries of ICM staff.
“When you give money to ICM, none of it goes to administration,” Parsons said. “I don’t know another Christian organization like it.”
He estimates 15,000 people each week attend the churches overseas that the Lexington church has built. Though he feels good about how Center Point is doing, he knows its ministry impact would continue through those churches even if the Lexington church went away — not that it plans to. “If our church died tomorrow, it wouldn’t die,” he said. “You’re diversified around the world.”
Supporting churches receive construction updates and reports for several years after a new church goes up, with statistics such as how many people attend, how many have made spiritual commitments and how many have been baptized.
Those buildings also tend to become a hub for the community, being used not only for worship services but also as feeding centers, medical clinics, schools, orphanages, or centers for addiction recovery or women’s vocational training.
“The building then becomes a tool and an opportunity to gather and let people know, ‘Here is a space for you,’” Sorensen said. “There’s holistic care that goes into it.”
And that impact only spreads as the church follows through and plants five more.
“There’s replication that’s happening,” Sorensen said. “It’s just a great thing to see that multiplication.”
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International Cooperating Ministries seeks to ensure there’s a church within walking distance of every person on earth. While some societies have cars, or at least public buses or motorbikes, "Most of the world probably is walking," said ICM’s Jim Thompson.
Also, Thompson said the center of Christianity has been shift over about 300 years, from northern Europe down to Africa.
"The average Christian today, missiologists say, is about 15 years of age and is black," Thompson said. Many of the world’s Christians are poor and live in the global south, he said, and "there are not many churches yet in these countries."
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