By David Winfrey

Bakersfield—Four brass ducks sit on Randy Bennett’s desk. The director of missions often uses the replica of a momma duck trailed by three baby ducks to illustrate four requirements for successful church planting.

“First, you have to have God’s vision,” said Bennett, who serves Kern County Baptist Association in Bakersfield. That’s followed by God’s man to lead and God’s resources to support it. Fourth, he said, is God’s timing.

“If you don’t have any of the four, it won’t work,” he explained. “If you get all four ducks in a row, you’ve got a pretty good shot of it working pretty well.”

Bennett has been lining up ducks for some time now. The Southern California native views starting and supporting churches as the association’s primary role. “We believe in starting churches in any method imaginable as long as God is in it and someone has a vision for it.”

The association remains open to a variety of ideas, even supporting an Internet church for a couple of years. The Web-savvy starter made a lot of contacts, Bennett noted, “but it just didn’t fly.”

“Starting churches is like drilling test-wells. You have an idea of where the oil is, but you never quite know, but you still try,” Bennett said. “You try a lot of different things. If it works, you praise God. If it doesn’t, you praise God that you tried.”

To assemble as many resources as possible, Bennett enlists local churches for a “5-1-5” support strategy. Five congregations are recruited to support one church plant for at least five years.

Bennett serves approximately 65 churches and new works in Kern County. About a dozen are Hispanic. The area is the cradle for Southern Baptist work in California, he noted.

Many of the original Southern Baptist churches were started by Oklahomans and Arkansans who migrated West during the Depression and Dust Bowl. They often didn’t feel at home at existing Baptist churches, he said. “They just wanted to have churches that felt like churches, so they started Southern Baptist churches.”

Today, church starters come from a variety of sources, Bennett noted. “It’s a God thing. God raises them up from just about everywhere.”

One current church planter moved from South Carolina and brought along several other young couples. They all arrived without jobs but feeling God’s call, Bennett said. “That has to be God because no one in their right mind would do that in this market.”

A key prayer concern is for church planters and others in the area who are getting started, he said. “Four are in the baby stages,” he explained.

“Our second need is our general budget. One thing about our association is we’ve never had much money.”

Often the most important resource churches and the association can offer are prayer, wisdom and experience, Bennett noted.

Every Tuesday morning, pastors meet for a fellowship breakfast that draws as many as 40 church leaders.

Afterward, Bennett, church starters and supporting pastors walk across the street to a Starbucks in a bookstore to talk about their work. They share concerns and pray for one another. “One of the fun things … is we’ve learned to pray with our eyes open,” he said. “We don’t want to be obnoxious in the eyes of the people who are at the coffee shop.”

Just sharing a need often results in someone else in the group being able to meet that need, Bennett added. “We’ve got a lot of refrigerators, a lot of food. We even got an apartment one time because of it.”

Because California Southern Baptists pray for and give to the California Mission Offering Bennett is helping Bakersfield congregations to demonstrate their “Love With Action.”

To view a short video of Randy, click here.