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The Southwest Story | Adam Brewer · Real Life Theology Podcast

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Welcome back to the Real Life Theology podcast. Today we continue our
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Amazing Baptisms series with Adam Brewer from Southwest
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Church of Christ in Jonesboro, Arkansas. Adam shares how
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the church celebrated 81 baptisms in 2025
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and what God is doing through its ministry.
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All right, well, good morning to everybody. And it is a
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blessing to be here. Um, I want to say thank you to Scott,
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wherever he is, uh, Scott Sager, for leading that,
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that song this morning. Was that not powerful?
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I had this thought as we were singing, um, kind of 2
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thoughts. Number one, I had this really beautiful reminder,
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uh, that I am surrounded by brothers and sisters who are about the same mission
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that I am about, which is crowning Jesus, Lord of all.
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I also had this second thought, and maybe you can track with me on this.
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Um, I was listening to all of your voices, but there
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were other voices that I was hearing sing that song. I was thinking about how
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many times my father has sang that song. I was thinking about my grandfather
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and hearing my grandfather's deep bass voice singing
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that song growing up. I was thinking about his grandfather and
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his grandfather and generations of men and women in my family
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and in your family who have all been about the same mission.
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It's the same mission that Jesus established, to make
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disciples who make disciples. And it's a blessing to be here this morning
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and just be with a group of brothers and sisters who are intentional
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and care about making disciples and seeing
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people and walking with people into the decision to
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be obedient to God's call to baptism. And so I'm
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just as excited to be here as you are. I'm excited to learn. I'm excited
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for some some rich conversations in how do we do this and how do we
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do this better. But my portion this morning, I believe,
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is just to tell a little bit of a story of what's been going on
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in Jonesboro. So my name is Adam Brewer. I've been at the Southwest
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Church of Christ in Jonesboro, Arkansas for about a little
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over 4 years or maybe right at 4 years. And it has
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been a blessing to watch the way that God has
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worked in that city and through that church. I want to
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tell you a story this morning of kind of our time coming to Southwest.
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And I want to tell you that story for really 2 reasons, but the story
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is this. We were working, or I was working,
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at a church in Athens, Alabama, and I loved that church.
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I still dearly love that church. My wife and I were very happy in
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this place, and we started to get a phone call from Jason
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Thompson, who was working with the Southwest Church in Jonesboro,
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and he told me about the church. He told me about a
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man who is here today named Jimmy Adcox, who is retiring after
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around 45 years in that church. And he just asked if we would be interested.
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Long story short, we weren't at first, but we finally decided,
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okay, let's just see what's going on. Wouldn't it be fun to just hear what's
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happening in another church? And so we started to entertain the thought,
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and eventually we go and we make the drive from Athens to
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Jonesboro. And over the course of about 3 days,
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here's what we found over and over and over.
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There are a lot of things that impressed us about this church, but the thing
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that made the biggest impact was the number of shepherds,
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the number of staff members, and most importantly, the number of members in
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that church that when we talked to them had something to say along this
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line: the Holy Spirit is moving in this place.
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Holy Spirit of God is working. We can see it.
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We can feel it. And it wasn't just theoretical. We can
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see or we hope the Spirit of God is working. There is a confidence.
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There was a belief that the Holy Spirit of God was on the move in
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this church. And we started to get really, really excited about that.
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And so over the course of 3 days and more conversations than I can count
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of listening to people talk about what the Holy Spirit was doing in this place,
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we got in our car and we were driving back and it was silent for
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about an hour. And I'm thinking,
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my wife Natalie is thinking, and finally we
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get all the way to the bridge leading into Memphis.
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And so we've been on the road for about an hour and really not said
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a word. And I break the silence and I look
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over at Natalie and I said, what do you think? And she
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says these words. She says, the Spirit of God
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is leading that church. And she said something
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really humbly, which is what our wives do really well, right?
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She said, that church doesn't need you.
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I was like, great.
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But then she follows up her humble reminder. She said,
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the Spirit of God is leading that church. That church does not need you.
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It doesn't need us. But then she said this statement.
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Wouldn't it be fun to join into what the Holy Spirit is doing?
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And I tell that story because it's meaningful for me and it's meaningful for
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me to keep that on my mind and my heart for 2 reasons. And it's
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important to make it clear to you this morning for 2 reasons. Number one,
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because it is a reminder that the things that we celebrate, the baptisms that we
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celebrate, are not because that church needed me.
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It's not because it needs our staff. It's because the Holy Spirit of God is
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moving and working. Amen.
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It's also important for me for a second reason,
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because sometimes I need reminded of what my wife told me.
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Wouldn't it be fun to join the Holy Spirit's work?
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I don't know if you're like me, but I need this reminder often in
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ministry, in church work. I need reminded that
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what we do is fun. What we do should be fun.
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What could be more fun than watching lives transformed
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by the gospel of Jesus? And what could be more fun than
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watching people make the decision to become obedient disciples
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of Jesus through the waters of baptism?
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And so this has been a fun year of ministry for me and
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for all of our staff members, uh, at the Southwest Church.
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So a little bit about Southwest. Southwest, as I said, is in Jonesboro,
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Arkansas. We're about a mile west— or excuse me, an hour west
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of Memphis. Arkansas State University is housed
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in the city, and so it's a fun, it's an exciting city to live
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in. The church there, when I got there,
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was already a thriving church. It was a healthy church,
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and for over 50 years And he would never tell you
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this, but a lot of that is due to the faithful and
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Spirit-led work of Brother Jimmy Adcox. For over
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45 years, he led that church. And one of the things that is so admirable
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to me about Brother Adcox's work is that he
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was sort of a pioneer in that church and in that city for
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a message of grace when it comes to the gospel of Jesus. But he
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never alienated biblical integrity. He preached the Bible,
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he preached the word of God, he preached the grace. And so the church
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that I stepped into had a long legacy in history of thriving and
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growing and making a difference in that city and community.
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But one of the things that Brother Adcox also did that I'm just extremely
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grateful for is he had spent years and years sort of laying the groundwork
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and acquainting our church with the language of
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discipleship and the mission of being disciple
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makers who make disciples for Jesus, who make disciples for Jesus.
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And so when I stepped into the church, uh, this is already one of the
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missions, uh, that was pretty clear-cut with our church, that we
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are going to be about making disciples for Jesus.
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So as I said, this was a really fun year of ministry,
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uh, and it shouldn't have been. We went through a capital campaign,
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which if you've been there is good, it's a blessing, but it is not fun.
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Uh, we went through some budget cuts at the end of the year, and those
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were not fun. Those were painful decisions. We went through
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some internal leadership struggle, and that wasn't fun, and there was drama
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attached to that. I think about all the things that happened in
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2025, uh, and I'm confident of this, and I already see it happening,
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that those moments of drama where you feel like, oh no, everything is falling apart
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in our church Those things just kind of wash away when you
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step back and look and say, 81 people
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came to the Lord through the waters of baptism this year. And that's a
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story that lasts. The drama, the pains, the difficulties
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of church work— those things will come and go, but these are eternal stories.
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81 people who came to the Lord in baptism.
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And so how did that happen? Out of 81 people
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come to the Lord in baptism. We can't— I can't really tell
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that story without referring to what Brother Bobby talked about,
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which is an emphasis in recovery ministry. And so those
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81 baptisms came from, I would say, a spectrum of different ministries
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in our church. And I'll just kind of highlight 3 of those, 2 which lean
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heavily into that idea or that ministry of recovery.
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So Southwest, I would say, has always had an emphasis on reaching
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out and being a church that's making a difference in our city, in our
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community. Um, but maybe you're, you're like Southwest
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and so many other churches. We want to follow the teachings
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of Jesus and reach out to the poor and reach out to the marginalized,
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but it's really, really difficult to disciple those people. And so
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we can give and we can hold events and we can hold Christmas events where
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we help with Christmas shopping and all of these things are beautiful and good and,
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I believe they're obedient to the teachings of Jesus, but how are we discipling these
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people? Um, so we have a staff member and
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her name is Dana Moore. Uh, Dana is our
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outreach minister and she is a woman who has a passion for
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the incarcerated and those who are battling drug addiction like
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no one I have ever seen before. When I
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say passionate, I mean she fights for these people.
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And for years and years, Dana has been sort of leading up some outreach efforts
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with prison ministry, with homeless ministry, and some things like
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that. But Dana had kind of this burning desire that I confidently believe
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the Spirit of God put in her heart, that there should be a home for
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young ladies in our city, a shelter, a place where these
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homeless young ladies who are coming out of drug addiction, many of them coming out
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of the prison system, can find a place to simply be safe. And she tells
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a story of a a young woman who was about 19 years old that
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she found under a bridge living in a tent with 2 other men.
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And she says, there's, there's got to be a place for a woman like this.
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And so Dana spends several years kind of going
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toe to toe with our city government officials,
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trying to find grant money, trying to find opportunities to just make a difference
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with this problem in our city. And then finally, one day Dana
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says this statement. She said, I'm sick and tired
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of waiting on our city's government to do the things that the church should be
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doing. Well, what do you do with that?
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A seed was planted, a vision, a mission was planted,
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and what came from that eventually was what we call the Promise House. And so
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the Promise House is a home that the church
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has purchased and bought, and it's a group of
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ladies Many of them who are coming out of active addiction,
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they're coming out of rehab programs. Many of them are coming out of being
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imprisoned. Some of them are just coming straight off of the streets.
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They come, they find a safe place to live. They find a safe
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place to grow, to be able to get back involved in some
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self-sustaining practices. They get jobs
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and things like this. And all of those life skills that they're learning in the
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Promise House are important. Um, but because we
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were a church that was trying our hardest to be intentional about making
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disciples, we can't just open this house and
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find— have a place for women to be safe and to
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learn some life skills for basic living. Uh, we needed
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to be a place where the disciple-making mission of
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our church is ingrained into the DNA of this house.
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And so one of the things that Dana and her team set up is this:
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When a woman comes into the Promise House, they're— one,
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they're given a safe space to live, to grow and thrive.
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But probably most importantly for us is they are assigned
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a mentor, another lady in our church. And this is a disciple-making relationship.
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And so when you come into the Promise House, you're assigned one of the faithful
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ladies of our church, and they sit down on an individual level and
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they go through the story of the gospel with these women. And they teach them
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the teachings of Jesus. And so on a regular basis,
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on a daily basis, they're meeting in a group setting at the house and they're
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studying the Word of God. They're going through some discipleship material. They're learning,
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they're growing. But on an individual level, they're also being discipled.
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And one of the most fun things in ministry that I
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have really ever encountered in my time of working in
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churches is watching the transformation that happens.
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You know, I tell our church oftentimes that one of
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those beautiful things that I will ever see, I'm convinced of,
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is the faces of these ladies on a regular basis after
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they've been walking through a discipleship process, they've been hearing the
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story of the gospel. It's not a requirement to be baptized,
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but almost every single one of the women who walk through this program have
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entered into the waters of baptism. And I get this beautiful opportunity
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to stand in the waters and to listen to the church sing. And I look
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over at these women and the church can't see them, but I can see them.
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They're sort of hidden behind this wall. And on a regular basis, I get to
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stand in the baptismal pool and listen to our
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church sing beautiful hymns like you all just sang. And I just
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look at these women and so many of them,
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I mean, literally, just months before this were
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selling their body for drugs. They were battling addictions
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that they had been in for decades. They've lost all relationships
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in their life. They've lost relationships with their children,
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many of them. But you wouldn't know that by the look on their faces.
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And I tell our church all the time that I do weddings a lot,
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and I've seen a lot of brides meet their grooms, and I've seen the look
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on their face, but I've never seen a look of giddy excitement like I
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see on these women as they are joining the bride of Christ through the
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waters of baptism. It's a beautiful thing.
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And so part of our story at Southwest is just having the Holy Spirit
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place this desire, this burning desire to make a difference in our community.
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And we've seen a lot of baptisms through that ministry. You fast
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forward, uh, just a short amount of time and,
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uh, One of the things that we see is that God
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sort of drops another recovery ministry in our lap.
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There was a men's recovery ministry that was meeting at a local church
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that had lost their facility, and this was a faith-based men's
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recovery ministry, but it wasn't tied to any specific denominational
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group. We started to talk to them, and we found that though their
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worship looked different than us, we were theologically aligned with this church.
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They believed in baptism and they were baptizing the men that were coming through this
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program. And so we just offered, you need a place?
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We've got a place. And what developed there was a sweet partnership
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with a group called Breaking Bonds Ministry that meets at our building. They hold
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daily classes there and they, they're with us on
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our Wednesday night services and they hold a Tuesday night worship service for
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about 400 people in our city who are all in
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in active recovery. One of the things, much like Promise House,
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for Breaking Bonds Ministry, this ministry that we've partnered with, is that when a
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man comes into Breaking Bonds Ministry, they are discipled.
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They're taught the life-giving and life-changing teachings of
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Jesus. And every Tuesday— excuse me,
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the last Tuesday of every month, they have a baptism service. And most of
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the men who are baptized in this have been studied with for a
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minimum of about 3 weeks. And it's incredible, much like
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those women, to watch these men on a monthly basis
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come in masses and give their lives to Jesus through
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baptism. And so for us, it was sort of this—
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we weren't expecting Breaking Bonds. I truly believe that we were
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faithful to one vision that the Spirit had given us, and God said, okay,
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you've been faithful to that. Now let's see what you can do with this,
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which we're grateful for. We're thankful for. But one of the things that I
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learned from this when thinking about baptism and just
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the strategies— we, I don't guess we really had a strategy
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for any of this. We're just trying to be faithful to the way that God
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was calling us to fish. Luke chapter 5,
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Jesus is about to place a life-changing call on Peter's
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life. He's going to call him to be a fisher of men. One of the
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things that he does before he makes this call is he gives Peter 2
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commands. He says, I want you to put out into the deep and I want
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you to lower your nets. So I know about as much about
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first-century Galilean fishing than a basic commentary
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will allow me. But one of the things that I understand is that what Jesus
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is commanding Peter to do is different than the way that Peter has always
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done things. It's daytime.
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Jesus has just finished teaching from Peter's boat. Peter typically
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fishes at night. I understand that's what they did when
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the schools of minnows would come up to the shallows.
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They would drag their nets along the edge as the larger fish came
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and fed. So it's daytime and Jesus is saying,
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go out into the deep. This isn't the place that Peter likely always fished.
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One of the things that I've sort of been convicted of as I'm looking at
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Southwest's story and the Promise House and the Breaking Bonds recovery ministry
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is this: I feel like one of the things that we've been called to do
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is to fish in deeper waters than we have been,
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to fish in different waters, to fish in different ways.
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You know, we're a church that kind of looks alike. We have a little bit
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of diversity in our church, not nearly what we wish we had, but we are
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a white middle-class church, and a lot
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of the people who come in our doors on Sunday mornings all look the same.
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And I feel like God sort of gave this burning passion for us. Could you
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just go deeper and could you just fish in a different way? And for us,
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that looked like recovery ministry, and God has blessed that greatly.
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There's also a sort of what I would say a third component.
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So we have these 2 recovery ministries that we've seen a lot of baptisms through,
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but there's also been an effort led by Brother Adcox
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to just form discipleship groups throughout our church.
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And we have a number of same-sex groups of about 3
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or 3 to 5 people that are meeting on a regular basis to
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be serious and intentional about talking about what it looks like to be
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a follower of Jesus. And these
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groups are a great way to evangelize to the people
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that you work with, great way to evangelize to your neighbor.
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I mean, what, what we're finding is that People are actually eager
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when you just have a conversation with someone and say, would you like to talk
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about what it looks like to be a husband or a father as a follower
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of Jesus? And so people are joining into some of these groups,
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and we're still growing, we're still learning a lot about this. But there's
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just one anecdotal story. I was looking at the list of names of
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these 81 baptisms, and there was a name on there that I saw last night.
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His name was Caleb. Young man. And I was trying to play the
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game of like, who discipled who? How did Caleb— I don't know Caleb—
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how did he, uh, come to baptism? And what I found was just this story
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of discipleship and these discipleship groups unraveling.
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And then I realized, oh, all of this started with a young man named Tyler
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who gathered in a room, I think on Thursday nights,
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with Jimmy and a few other men to talk about the teachings of Jesus.
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And Tyler was baptized. And you fast forward a little bit, then Tyler
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brings his friend Xavier, and then Xavier brings Steven,
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his friend. And one day after an invitation,
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Steven comes forward and he's baptized. And not too long
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after that, Steven's wife was baptized, and then Steven's wife's sister was
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baptized. And wouldn't you know it, Caleb is the son of
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Steven's wife's sister. 6 baptisms that
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all came from a group of men who said, Why don't
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we gather together, be intentional about discipleship and disciple-making,
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and talk about Jesus on a Thursday night?
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It's incredible what happens when we just take a
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simplistic yet powerful approach to the call that Jesus gives
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each of us to make disciples in this
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world. One of the things that— and I'll kind of end with this—
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that Bobby asked for me to discuss was how do
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we as a church emphasize baptism?
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How do we emphasize it? And this is convicting
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to me. If you're a preaching minister in here, this is your job.
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How are you emphasizing the importance of baptism in your church?
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And so I'm embarrassed to tell you what I'm about to tell you, but I
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want to be open and honest with you that this has been a learning curve
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for me. Maybe you resonate with this. I grew up in the
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Churches of Christ. That's my history, my roots, my context.
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It's all I know, and I'm thankful for that. But I
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think for some reason I, I grew up, and as a young man, I sort
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of looked and I saw there's always been a heavy emphasis
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on baptism in the Churches of Christ. And at least from
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my perspective, whether it was judgmental or inaccurate, my perspective was there's
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been an unhealthy emphasis on baptism. And so
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I would always ask this question of, okay, where's the discipleship?
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Where's the faithful living? Is all we're desiring to do is just get people
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into the waters of baptism? There's got to be more to the story. And so
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for me, I'm going to be honest with you, as a young
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preacher, I looked at baptism and I thought,
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I don't, I don't want to be like those old fogey conservative churches where
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all we're doing is talking about baptism. And I even stopped
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offering an invitation. In my mind, offering an
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invitation was one of those things, you go preach at a small church or something
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and they gather together on the Wednesday nights. If you still do this, I'm not
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poking fun at you, but they gather together on Wednesday nights for a 5-minute
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devotional. It's just the same 30 people that are always in there and they're like,
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you better offer an invitation. And I thought, I don't want to be one of
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those guys. And so here's what I found. I stopped
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emphasizing baptism. I stopped offering invitations.
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And guess what happened? Not many baptisms.
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We were still seeing baptisms, but most of them were
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from our student ministry, and most of them were children
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whose parents had been discipling them. And one day it just hit me that
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our student ministers and our parents are doing a better job at
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emphasizing baptism than their lead preaching minister.
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That's not good.
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And so with this convicting thought, I sort of got to a place where I
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decided, you know what, am I so afraid that
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someone is going to label me conservative or liberal or this or that for emphasizing
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baptism? It's not conservative or liberal or progressive,
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it's biblical. What happens in scripture when
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someone presents the gospel message of Jesus? What happens at Pentecost?
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Unexpected response is there. You enter into
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the waters of baptism if you believe in the life-giving truth of Jesus Christ.
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And so I started offering an invitation more. We began last year
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with a teaching series on the basics of belief and baptism,
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and what I found was that the people in our church were not rolling their
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eyes when we start to talk about baptism like I thought they were. They were
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hungry for it. They desired it. They had questions about
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it. They were wrestling with it themselves. And we had an influx of adult baptisms
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in the first quarter of last year, all because we were bold
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enough and faithful enough and put our— at least my own preconceived
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notions about speaking on baptism aside and made
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a decision to just be faithful to what God has called us
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to do. And so if I could give any advice,
25:18
and maybe there'll be time to do this in the Q&A, I'll give a few
25:21
more pieces of advice. But I would simply say this:
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be creative in how you are evangelizing.
25:30
Fish in deeper waters. Fish in waters you've not been in. Be creative,
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but always be biblical. So be creative,
25:38
but be biblical. And number 2,
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don't be afraid. Don't be afraid to
25:45
be faithful. Preach what God has given you to preach.
25:49
Preach what Scripture gives you to preach. Preach the gospel with
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an expectation that if we give the Holy Spirit space to work,
25:57
he will work in ways far beyond anything we could imagine.
26:01
Thank you, guys.
26:19
I was looking in the wrong place. Adam,
26:22
thanks, man. What a presentation. Thank you for this story
26:27
and the way you've related it. Um,
26:30
you reflected a great deal of humility at the same time of
26:34
following. One of the things that you emphasized that
26:39
came to mind for me as I was listening to you is that
26:44
the Spirit of God is at work and
26:47
that what you have sought to do from the very beginning
26:51
of your association with that church was to discern the Spirit's
26:55
leading and then to
26:59
follow it. I wanted to go
27:03
back to that for just a moment. What suggestions would you have for
27:07
those of us who are wanting to discern
27:11
the Spirit's leading in our context and follow
27:15
it? Oh, that's a good
27:18
question. Um, I'm going
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to speak as a lead minister and say,
27:27
first of all, I think there's a lot of humility in that.
27:30
Um, those recovery ministries Um,
27:35
even much of that discipleship ministry— these things are not my ideas.
27:39
I didn't have to come up with this. I think there's— God has assembled
27:43
in all of your churches a team of people that are spiritual discerners,
27:46
hopefully. And so I think there's a lot of humility that comes with just,
27:51
um, listening to your team,
27:54
finding out what God is placing on their heart, and be willing to chase after
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a vision that maybe isn't yours but you've faithfully discerned is
28:02
something that God is calling the church to. The second thing was,
28:06
I mean, I think I didn't get a chance to talk about it enough in
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the 20 minutes we had, but prayer cannot be understated
28:15
in all of this. I don't think you can see faithfully,
28:19
see the Spirit's work in your church without being
28:23
faithful warriors of prayer.
28:27
And so we, we need our staff to be praying for these things. We need
28:30
our shepherds, our leadership, to be praying for these things. So, uh,
28:34
I think prayer is sort of the underlying current of being discerners of what the
28:38
Spirit of God's doing. Uh,
28:41
in the short period of time that we have left here, I want to,
28:44
uh, go more directly into this question,
28:48
which is an important piece of what we were trying to discern from each
28:52
of the presenters. What are a few things in
28:57
your journey as a church where you're trying to improve?
29:02
You're, you're working to be better at— Yeah,
29:05
so many things. We don't have all of this
29:09
figured out and we're not getting everything right. Um, I go back
29:13
to Luke 5. Jesus tells Peter, go into the deep
29:16
and let down your nets. He does it. And then if
29:19
you recall from the text, what happens? They're not
29:23
equipped to bring all those fish in, are they? It says their
29:26
boats start to sink. They have to call other boats in. And so
29:30
I think that's where we're at right now. We can look
29:34
at these numbers and say 81 baptisms, but the next question is, what are we
29:37
doing with these 81 people? How are we faithfully walking them through
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a process of discipleship? And so we want,
29:45
we want to filter these people into some of these discipleship groups that I mentioned.
29:48
We want to keep their relationships with these mentors intact.
29:53
But, I mean, the simple fact is you have an influx of
29:57
baptisms, you need to find a way to keep all of these people
30:01
in the boat or in the church, how to ingrain them into the life of
30:04
the church. And we're probably not doing that very well,
30:08
but we're trying, and we've got some, some work to do
30:11
in that area. Thanks for
30:16
listening to the Real Life Theology podcast. Be sure to like,
30:19
comment, and subscribe for more episodes. You can also visit
30:23
renew.org for additional podcasts and resources.