Team plants two churches and revitalize a third
SALT LAKE CITY – Four pastors and their families moved to Salt Lake City in 2011 at God’s direction, they say.
“I grew up in Idaho,” Will Galkin, one of the four pastors, said. “I knew the need for Salt Lake. When the four of us wanted to plant a church here, it all came together.”
Through conversations and building relationships to amass a core group, Lead Pastor Lukus Counterman, with Jonathan Albright, Jon Kopp, and Will Galkin, planted Gospel Grace Church with a heart toward Salt Lake City, right off the campus of University of Utah.
Today, at least 650 people attend Sunday morning worship at Gospel Grace, now located near downtown Salt Lake City, where they learn and experience how, as the church’s website states, “the gospel of grace changes everything.”
Gospel Grace Church desires to be a multiplying church in Utah, with a primary focus of planting and revitalizing churches from Spanish Fork in the south up to Logan to the north. To assist in this church planting movement, the four pastors created Plant for the Gospel (P4tG), a Utah-based mission organization, to serve as a clearing house for mission funds, the collaboration of missional efforts, and an encouragement through relationships for what they call the Family of Churches.
Three churches at the present time are part of this Family of Churches: Gospel Grace Church, Gospel Hope Church in southwest Salt Lake City, and Gospel Peace Church in Logan.
In 2018, Gospel Grace Church was able to assist a team of pastors to reinforce the previous gospel work being done by Trinity Baptist Church, which changed its name to Gospel Hope Church. Gospel Hope celebrated the fifth anniversary of this intentional renewal this year.
In 2021, a team of four pastors, their families, and approximately 40 adults from Gospel Grace Church and from out of state moved to Logan, Utah, to plant Gospel Peace Church. They chose Logan, located 80 miles north of Salt Lake City, “because it is a small town with a major university,” Paul Campbell, the lead pastor, told UI Connections, referring to the main campus of Utah State University.
“It was strategic and attainable,” Campbell continued. “Strategic because a university impacts the culture locally and, in time, internationally. Attainable because less than 1 percent of the population in Cache Valley attends an evangelical church.”
In addition to providing a 2-year pastoral residency dedicated to helping supply pastors for this church planting movement, one of the strategic initiatives of P4tG is Plant Camp. This is where people come to Utah to assist the Family of Churches develop redemptive relationships and become equipped to share their faith with the religious and irreligious alike, an aspect that makes Salt Lake City such a unique place to learn.
“Downtown Salt Lake City is headquarters for a worldwide religion, and yet [the city is] the seventh-highest in the nation for the LGBTQ community, according to a New York Times Aug. 13, 2023, article, so we have tremendous opportunities to share Jesus with the irreligious and religious alike,” Galkin told UI Connections.
Plant Camp has been in existence for 11 years and has averaged 300-400 attendees over the last three years. For more information about Plant Camp, visit www.plantcampslc.com.
Additionally, P4tG has been looking for ways to serve churches outside of their Family of Churches. In the summer of 2024 a Send Network week is to take place. Most of the outreach will be centered on serving Send Network church plants.
Commenting on how Plant Camp has specifically helped Gospel Peace Church, Paul Campbell explained, “We provided training and preaching [each evening]. The goal is for the teens to inform, serve and proclaim the gospel. The first summer we [Plant for the Gospel] put door hangers on almost every home in the valley,” which has a population of about 150,000. “This year we did two soccer camps in Logan,” among other outreach efforts.
The North American Mission Board sends Gen Send college students to work with and serve Gospel Grace and Gospel Peace churches for eight weeks at a time.
The Family of Churches continue to follow the pattern of team planting as they advance the church planting movement throughout northern Utah.
“Team planting has always been the healthiest way to plant churches,” Send Network Utah Idaho Missionary Bobby Wood told UI Connections. “The New Testament model shows that the Apostle Paul and others often served alongside many different people.
“Team planting helps provide complementary gifts that are needed during the planting process,” Wood continued. “Additionally, team planting allows for more community and less loneliness to take place during the early days of the church plant.”
For more information about this and other methods we use to promote church planting across our two states, visit www.uisbc.org/church-planting.
Draper, UT – Everyone has a story. So does every church. Within those stories are triumphs when a new ministry is birthed, grief over family tragedy, laughter over something said by a kid to a ministry volunteer, and stories of families transformed by the simple message of the gospel. Stories tell our history, and this year, the State Missions Offering is highlighting stories of churches and associations that have utilized resources from past mission funds to impact their communities with the gospel. The week of prayer shares eight days of stories focusing on just a few of the ways your Utah Idaho State Mission dollars have been used in just the last twelve months. And these stories continue to be written.
Our 2023 Recharge: Pastors and Wives Retreat at Newpark Resort in Park City, UT held July 18-20 was a huge success and would not have been possible without partnership between three entities working together with one goal in mind: to bless the pastors and their wives who bless our churches across Utah and Idaho. GuideStone Financial Resources provided travel and accommodations for Mark and Janet Dance who oversees Pastoral Wellness at GuideStone. Worship was provided by Danny Kugelberg from Church at the Gates in Missoula, MT. North American Mission Board provided gifts and meals, as well as the majority of the financial expenses to allow our pastors to attend with no personal financial burden to themselves other than transportation to the resort. Utah Idaho SBC picked up the remainder of the expenses for meals and rooms. Every pastor and their spouse was blessed with resources, gifts, and gift cards from all the ministry partners who participated.
The next Recharge: Pastors and Wives Retreat will be in McCall, Idaho in the spring of 2024. The schedule and format will be very similar to the Utah event, running Thursday-Saturday, April 25-27. If you are interested, block out those dates on your calendar and stay tuned for more details which will be posted and distributed through our website and UI Connections monthly email blast. 
Layton, UT – In an era when everything targeting teens focuses on making themselves look good, it is nice to see the next generation giving glory to God and seeking after the interests of others. The theme for Sonfest 2023 was “Selfless in a Selfie World” and was based on Philippians 2:3 where Paul encourages believers to “do nothing out of selfish ambition or conceit, but in humility consider others as more important than yourselves”
Mountain View Baptist Church was host for this event, August 3-5, 2023. The hope was that by returning to a local church, we could lower costs and have the ability to host smaller breakout opportunities over the weekend that we were not able to do in previous venues. Guest speaker Algernon Tennyson shared a series of messages from Philippians 2 and 3 over the three main sessions while Sons of Asaph worship team facilitated relevant worship experiences that gave students an opportunity to sing praises together with peers form seven different churches across the two state convention. While the numbers were down, that did not dissuade the students present to connect with one another and respond to the challenges by Big Al.
Lunch was provided to students after the morning of breakout sessions, followed by group games and recreation in the field around the host church, followed by church group time. Friday concluded with dinner, then the second main session of worship and preaching. The event concluded with a final Saturday morning worship session followed by many of the youth going to Lagoon Amusement park in Farmington, UT. 
Sonfest 2024 will plan to be more of a hybrid of the new format, but will have those breakouts on Saturday morning before session two which will motivate students going to Lagoon to use the lessons learned the previous two sessions to seek out gospel conversations in the park. The hope is that by moving it back to a Friday to Sunday will allow more churches to participate by removing the burden of adult sponsors from having to take an extra day off of work like they did this year.