Jim Murphy

The heartland consists of many states making up the middle of our nation. While much of it is largely rural and agricultural, it is by no means a homogenous community or culture. This offers many challenges and needs with gospel movement being the most important. 

This can be acutely seen in many of the “forgotten and overlooked” places scattered throughout this vast section of our nation. Many of these rural counties, third-tier cities, county seats, and small towns have not seen a new Gospel work in years or decades. Someone could live their entire life in a small town and never hear the Gospel. Dying congregations, moralism, and lethargy are rampant throughout these communities. For a long time, they have been overlooked by others but not by our God, who is on mission throughout the world. For Him, there are no overlooked areas or fly over states. 

My wife and I were born and raised in the heartland, and for the last ten years, we have had a growing desire to be on mission with God here. Working with Saturation Church Planting (scpglobal.org) districts from the Christian and Missionary Alliance (cmalliance.org) as well as with Equipt, Inc., we are working to establish The Heartland Gospel Initiative. 

The Heartland Gospel Initiative (HGI) exists to glorify God by striving to see faithful and partnered expressions of the Church in every county of the Heartland with the purpose of giving every man, woman, and child repeated opportunities to hear and respond to the message of the Gospel.

To see this mission become reality, we strive to plant, partner, and/or repurpose a congregation in every county throughout the heartland. Therefore, our work focuses on going county by county to help discover and to develop leaders who will leverage their resources toward reaching every man, woman, and child. 

We cannot do this alone and are deeply grateful for those who partner with us in seeing this important Gospel work accomplished. While this mission seems overwhelming, it is entirely possible because it correlates to God’s mission in the broader world!