A Reluctant Missionary–Bill Davis, Church Starts International
With his wife, Mary, Bill Davis was one of the “Million More in ‘54”—saved through the work of a new California Southern Baptist church started in the town where he worked as a welder. Six months later, they moved to Huntington Beach, CA, where they joined another new Southern Baptist work started by this author, Ted Lindwall, who was taking one year out from his studies at Golden Gate Seminary. Within a year, Davis felt called to preach but with the handicap of not having completed even grade school! Shortly, he took his wife and three young daughters to Clear Creek Baptist College, a Southern Baptist training school in Pineville, KY, for pastors such as he. His income dropped by 90% during that time and many of their meals came miraculously at the last moment! But they persisted (Read more) and began to pastor small country churches and then, ever-larger churches, mostly on the mission fields of Indiana. Davis’s educational handicap was more than overcome by his joyful zeal and his unusual spiritual gifts, especially that of a missionary innovator. He started and grew congregations in ways not to be found in books and this attracted the attention and wonder of many.
In 1994, Davis retired to rural Texas, where he planned to dedicate his last years to fishing. It was not to be. Against his wishes, reluctantly he accepted a friend’s invitation to go for two weeks to eastern Romania with on evangelistic mission. They went evangelizing house to house and the results were amazing. By the end of the two weeks, a significant group of people had been saved and were being discipled. When the two men left that community, the believers were left alone, like spiritual orphans. The following year, the men returned and were sent to a different community and with the same kind of results. Bill’s pastor-heart was broken and he knew he had to return to Romania to start Baptist churches. He laid the groundwork in the States, legally organizing “Church Starts International.” He prepared Romanian Baptist churches to set up about ten different missionary training centers and encouraged church starting efforts through American missionary teams. Lindwall, who had retired from the IMB, accompanied him and trained the Romanians to use the field-proven materials he wrote and CSI published. New churches were started every year for five years—starting nearly 100 new churches at a time when a single church start was considered significant. This work was in full fellowship with the Romanian Baptist Convention and IMB personnel in Eastern Romania.
After this time in Romania, Bill’s small CSI leadership team was invited to northern Moldova by IMB missionaries as well as the Baptist leader in the area. Approximately 200 Moldovan missionaries and church members were trained in Russian, and the CSI church starting movement took off in that land as well as in Russia where many of the Moldovan missionaries served. In less than 20 years, Baptist work in eastern Romania as well as in northern Moldova has tripled in size—based primarily on the strategies and materials provided at the start by CSI. Only God knows the fruit count in Russia where Moldovan missionaries have gone.
At this time, Bill Davis continues ministry in Romania, Moldova, the Ukraine and different provinces in vast stretches of Siberia. Teams are unable to enter Russia, but Davis works, through Skype, with Russian workers, mostly volunteers. They continue using the same disciple-making strategies and materials and the movement is spreading widely. Bro. Bill does not take a salary, living on Social Security and a modest Guidestone Annuity. His is an example of the outstanding mission contribution made by hundreds of Southern Baptist-based missionary organizations that have spontaneously taken life among Southern Baptists. The ministry of CSI has touched many parts of the world and has benefited denomination-sponsored missionaries as well as self-supporting ones and national laborers on many fields.
