30 Years with Bring Them In
October, 2005 marked 30 years that Dr. Larry Hipps has headed up the Bring Them In Ministry. Join us in celebrating this milestone with him. Here’s a brief history of Larry’s Ministry with the Bring Them In Evangelistic Association Inc. Dr. Larry Hipps has spent all of his adult life working in the local church. He began in 1970 in Flint River Baptist Church in Huntsville, Alabama, his home church.
From there Larry was called to West Rome Baptist Church in Rome, Georgia. During his four years there, the Bus Ministry climbed from an average of 125 on five buses to 400 on eight buses. In 1980, Larry went to Broadway Baptist Church in Memphis, Tennessee. During his seven years there, the buses averaged fifty per route with an all time high of 1,576 on twenty routes. Larry’s duties at Broadway also included Junior Church, the Puppet Ministry, and the children’s Sunday School. From 1988 to 2004, Larry served as the Children’s Teaching Pastor responsible for the Bus Ministry, Children’s Church and AWANA Club at the Sagemont Baptist Church in Houston, Texas. (Sagemont Church has over 15,000 members.) There he conducted three Children’s services (averaging over 500 each Sunday), and was responsible for the church’s seven bus routes, which run on both Saturday and Sunday mornings. The AWANA Club averaged over 500 each week, 3 year olds – 12th grade.Larry Hipps now heads the Bring Them In Ministries on a full time basis and through the Bring Them In Evangelistic Association, he publishes/edits BTI News Online. Bring Them In conducts Children’s Conferences and Seminars across the country that are attended by hundreds of Children’s Ministry workers each year. The ministry also provides unique resource material designed for those in all areas of the Children’s Ministry.Larry has spoken in Revivals, Bus and Children’s Church Conferences, Church Camps and Church Growth Seminars by invitation in 34 states, Canada, Mexico and South Africa.Larry Hipps is the president of the International Bus Ministry Association and the author of several books, including the BTI Children’s Church Lessons, the BTI Bus Director’s Manual and the BTI Bus Captain’s Handbook.
Bring Them In in Print
It began in 1971 as Bring Them In Magazine and kept that title until 2004 when the name was changed to BTI News to better reflect the intent of the publication.Bring Them In was started after a Bus Ministry Conference by Wick Brandon, who was the publisher/editor from March, 1971 until January, 1972. The first issues of Bring Them In were simply copied pages stapled together. THe first issue of Bring Them In is shown at the right.In 1972, the magazine as passed on to S. Ray Sadler, who served as the publisher/editor until his untimely death in a small plane crash in November of that year. His brother, Joe R. Sadler took over the periodical until June, 1975.In September, 1975 Larry Hipps became the publisher/editor and began to expand the ministry from just the magazine to a multi-facetted non-profit ministry. The first issue of BTI Magazine under Larry’s leadership was published in October, 1975. The October, 1975 issue (shown below) was the first published by Larry Hipps (on the right), shown on the cover with Sam Wolfe, then pastor of West Huntsville (AL) Baptist Church. Larry continually published the quarterly periodical for the past 30 years taking it from primarily a Bus Ministry magazine to a publication covering many areas of the Children’s Ministry until 2007 when the publication became BTI News Online. available on the Bring Them In web site.
BTI also published a short-lived magazine called Puppet UpDate in 1978.
Click here to get past issues of Bring Them In.
BTI Online
The Bring Them In web site has been a wonderful asset to the ministry. We started the web site almost four years ago and now with over 15,000 visitors a month, it has introduced Bring Them In to an entirely new group of children’s ministers leaders. We not only have articles and an online catalog there, we get questions almost daily from Children’s Ministry leaders all over the country and around the world. From our web site, we have developed an extensive e-mail list for our monthly e-newsletter. To sign-up for our e-newsletter, just click on the link above.
“God’s Go Team”
“God’s Go Team” is the support group for the Bring Them In Ministry. Started over 20 years ago, “God’s Go Team” provides prayer, advisory and financial support for BTI and Larry Hipps. Members receive the monthly “God’s Go Team” newsletter and other benifits. It was from this group that our 30 Year Celebration Committee came—they are largely responsible for the information you are reading. The committee members are:
Barry & Alice Edwards
Jerry & Dee Ann Bennett
Jim & Jodie Goode
Ray Schnautz
Roxanne Cooke
Just click below for information about becoming a part of this great group and how you can support this ministry.
For the 30 years Larry Hipps has been in charge of the BTI Ministry, conferences, seminars and other training events have been an important part of the Ministry.It all started with the first conference in September, 1976 at the Tower Grove Baptist Church in St. Louis, MO with 476 people. Since then, well over 15,000 have attended a BTI training event.We have several conferences and seminars planned for the upcoming months and it’s a wonderful, low cost way to train and motivate your children’s ministry workers. You can get more info by clicking on the headline above.
Ministry Resources
Providing resource material is a principle part of the BTI ministry. We currently have over 300 books, specialty products, and other items for those in all areas of the Children’s Ministry. You can see all these in the catalog section.We have items for those in Sunday School, Children’s Church, Christian Clowning, the Bus Ministry, the Puppet Ministry, Christian Juggling, and many other areas of ministry.Plus we are working on and searching for new material all the time. It’s our desire to help children’s ministry workers by providing them with pertinent resources that will assist them as they strive to reach and teach children for Christ.
What’s Ahead?
As effective and far-reaching as Bring Them In has been through the years, it has always been a “part time” ministry. We were limited in how much we could minister and many of the things we could do. Now that Larry Hipps is “full time” with BTI, this will change and allow us to help churches reach people in ways we were unable to before.We will be able to book more of the BTI Children’s Ministry Conferences, have more seminars, have time to develop more resources and be available to help more churches without being limited to only a few weekends a year.
The future of the Bring Them In Ministry is bright and exciting. We have done so much in the past that has resulted in hundreds of people coming to know Christ as a result of our ministry. This is a new era for BTI—as we continue to do the things we have done well through the years and with the changes, development of new resources and teaching events, and with Larry Hipps being able to devote his entire energies to the ministry, we can expect God to do even more in the years to come.
Have Larry in Your Church | Larry Hipps Schedule
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