Join us this October 22-23 for our UISBC Pastors’ Conference, Women’s Conference, and Annual Meeting. Registration information is available on our website. This is a great time to connect with other churches and develop networking relationships from across the two state convention. There will be great messages, food, fellowship, worship, and connection with friends you may only get to see at these events. Hear from your International Missionaries serving around the world, as well as entity leaders from around the SBC.
We started U&I Together in UI Connections to provide a place where churches can promote upcoming events or celebrate what God has been doing in and through our churches. Send your submissions to State Missionary Jason McNair at jmcnair@uisbc.org.
This month, U&I Together brings reports and celebrations of some of this summer’s activities, including Sonfest, across our two states.
September 2026
Localizing Disaster Relief
Treasure Valley Southern Baptist Association Disaster Relief volunteers recently had the opportunity to minister in our local area, rather than traveling out of state,” reported the association’s administrative assistant, Michele Ring.
The June 26th storm – with its flash flooding in Caldwell – resulted in more than 30 people being displaced, with a great need for both physical and spiritual help.
Joe and Delores O’Neill were asked to serve as chaplains to help those in need spiritually. John (and his wife Juanita) Montoya, the new Disaster Relief director for the Treasure Valley Baptist Association, were tasked with clean up for a devastated family.
“Other local volunteers were able to help as well,” Ring wrote in the latest issue of the TVBA newsletter, The Focus. “In addition, volunteers were able to use our local resources such as the Disaster Relief trailer. It was extremely gratifying to bring both physical and spiritual help.”
Utah pastor pens discipleship book
Dustin Carpenter, pastor of Roosevelt (Utah) Baptist Church recently published Apprenticeship to King Jesus: Catechesis for a secular age on Amazon. It’s about learning to follow Jesus in everyday life,” Carpenter told U&I Together. “This way of discipleship has been a game changer in our church.”
According to Amazon’s description of the 318-page book, “In a culture that forms us 24 hours a day, what does it actually look like to be formed by Jesus?
Apprenticeship to King Jesus is an invitation back to an ancient path, one the early church used to form disciples into apprentices of the King.” Carpenter uses Scripture, the Nicene Creed, the Lord’s Prayer and the 10 commandments to develop a spiritually disciplined life.
“Drawing on echoes from Star Wars, The Lord of the Rings, Narnia, and Marvel, this book reveals how the Story Behind all stories is breaking into our world, and how you can step into it,” the Amazon description continues. Otherwise, it’s available in paperback for $14.99 or on Kindle for $4.99, or free on Kindle Unlimited.
Cascade church celebrates community
Central Valley Baptist Church in Cascade, Idaho, in June hosted its annual “Community BBQ and Kids Festival.” At least 200 people participated.
In addition to food, fun and building community, assisted in part by a NAMB/UISBC evangelism grant, Pastor Richard Iddings reported 19 gospel conversations and two professions of faith in Jesus.
“It is truly wonderful how effective food is at overcoming social barriers,” Iddings wrote in his report of the event. “This was our second year hosting a community BBQ, open to all, promoted using social media, banners, posters, and invitations.
“This event serves as a springboard for many of our other ministries and as an introduction to many unfamiliar with our church family. The event was a wonderful success, we saw a steady stream of familiar and unfamiliar faces, over 200 people were served burgers and hotdogs over the course of three hours, many Jesus and gospel conversations were had, and two people later accepted Christ.
“The real strength of this event is not on event day,” the pastor wrote. “It is the residual impact. For example, this year we had our largest VBS to date and one of the largest VBS weeks in our local county, plus more kids joining us for our Summer Fun events. Our clothing closet ministry has been consistently larger than the previous year, and we continue to see new families from the event joining us in corporate worship.
“We have already had discussions in how to improve next year, stretch our reach into the unchurched/dechurched community, and expand our gospel impact,” Iddings concluded, including other church leaders in his “We.”
Red Hills baptizes at Quail Creek
A “good number” of baptisms have taken place at Red Hills Southern Baptist Church in Cedar City, Utah, Pastor Joe Kline told U&I Together. He emailed later to say the total for the year, as of Sept. 8, is 23, thirteen in the last month alone.
“The Holy Spiirit is moving. God is at work,” Kline said. “It’s been miraculous what God is doing. Some are coming through the youth group. Some are kids coming to us.”
Kline said he and the church’s Youth Team have been working with the youth this year.
“It’s a lot of building relationships, getting to know families, and just being one-on-one with people, answering questions, getting in the Word,” Kline continued. “Especially in the youth and college age there’s a real hunger and thirst to know the Lord. Not religion but a true relationship.”
Red Hills Southern Baptist Church baptized 27 people in 2025, and 32 in 2024, according to its annual All Church Profile (ACP) reports.
Hispanic churches in Utah gather for Missions Education training
Leaders from Hispanic Churches from along the Wasatch Front in Utah
Hispanic church leaders and families from half a dozen churches and ministries along the Wasatch Front gathered at Canyons in Español in Salt Lake City where they learned how the Utah Idaho SBC York Dillman State Mission Offering is used to strengthen churches within our two states by supporting ministries like Disaster Relief, Collegiate Ministry, Women’s ministries, and Salt Lake School of Theology.
They also were informed by UISBC Executive Director Rob Lee on how Cooperative Program dollars are distributed through the National SBC and used locally to support the operations of the convention.
WMU President and UISBC part-time ministry assistant, Sonia Gutierrez, along with her husband, spoke about Annie Armstrong Easter Offering for North American Missions and Lottie Moon Christmas Offering for International Missions.
SLBA Pastors gather to focus on Gospel centered preaching
On Wednesday, September 2, pastors and ministry leaders from across the Salt Lake Baptist Association gathered at Canyons Church for September Pastoral Fellowship. The event began with worship, heard from God’s Word as pastor Luke Bylsma of Gospel Light in Salt Lake City presented a message from Philippians 2.
SLBA Executive Director, Andrew Jones shared “One of my hopes for the SLBA is that our gatherings would be about more than conducting associational business. We want to cultivate mutual care among pastors that leads to genuine gospel partnership among churches. That starts with relationships—knowing one another, praying for one another, learning from one another, and wanting to see one another’s churches flourish.”
Most of the discussion centered on The Heart of Preachinga book given away at the event to every pastor in attendance as a gift from Crossway Publishing. The text of the book addresses the challenge of bringing the gospel to bear on the real lives of our people. Andrew continued, “We talked about the relationship between the gospel, gospel truths, and gospel conduct and considered how our preaching can move beyond simply telling people what to do by helping them see how Christian obedience flows from the good news of what Christ has done.”
The next gathering of the SLBA will be their Annual Meeting in November, also at Canyons Church.
By Chip Hutcheson, content editor for Kentucky Today.
The following article is used by permission by Kentucky Today, the official state paper of Kentucky Baptists. The original article appeared in the September 8 edition of Kentucky Today
Dr Matthew Emadi is lead pastor of Christ Covenant Church in Midvale, UT, which formerly went by the name Crossroads Church in Sandy, but felt the new name better reflected the current vision Christ Covenant has to reach their new community.
MIDVALE, Utah — A Kentucky Baptist Convention vision tour several years ago resulted in a connection for Grace Baptist Church in Somerset, Kentucky with a church planter in Utah — and that partnership has flourished. Grace Baptist takes annual mission trips to support the church’s work, and last month the Utah congregation bought a building that was formerly a Latter-day Saints meeting house.
The church plant formerly operated under the name Crossroads Church, located in Sandy, Utah, but the August move to Midvale, Utah, brought with it a name change. The Southern Baptist church now goes by the name Christ Covenant Church.
Todd Meadows, pastor of Grace Baptist and chairman of KBC’s Administrative Committee, shared a video of Christ Covenant “making it official that a former Mormon ward, where darkness prevailed, has been officially claimed and transformed into a church that will worship the one true living God and be an outpost for gospel advancement.”
Mike West, pastor of missions and discipleship at Grace, said he met Matt Emadi on that original vision trip.
Emadi earned his Ph.D. from The Southern Baptist Theological Seminary and returned to his home state in 2014 as a church planter. He now serves as senior pastor of Christ Covenant.
As a result of connecting with Emadi, West now travels with a mission team once a year, usually in July, to assist the Utah congregation. “We have been going for six years, doing Vacation Bible School and different work projects, as well as street evangelism,” said West, who has been a member of Grace since 2009 and on staff for eight years.
The recent location change and new name are seen as major positives for the Utah church.
“The move to a new building is not far from where they were meeting, but it is a different community,” West observed. “The building that housed a Mormon ward had closed down. Several in the (Salt Lake) Valley are closing because not as many people are attending, so they are combining wards.”
In past years, the Grace mission team would travel to the former church location that was situated on a one-acre horse farm. “They met in an old house, which we helped remodel, both the interior and exterior. In the long run the work we did was beneficial because it helped them sell the property pretty quickly.”
The new location will provide “much more space” for the congregation now numbering about 200. “It is a massive upgrade in facilities,” said West. There is a gym, which will serve as a multi-purpose fellowship hall, and more rooms for small groups.
When Emadi went to Utah, he took the church and moved it from being independent Baptist to a Southern Baptist church. On its website, the church asks people to “pray for our church and for the Lord to provide evangelistic opportunities in our new neighborhood.”
Pastor Matthew Emadi assists church volunteer in replacing the spear from atop the former Mormon ward meetinghouse with a cross as Christ Covenant began services in their new building on September 6.
A YouTube video shows the steeple on the newly purchased building being removed and replaced by a cross. One comment on that video stated, “To see this moved my heart so powerfully. I couldn’t hold back the tears of joy. When you come out of Mormonism and find the real Jesus and then watch this taking down the steeple of such a harmful and false religion, to be replaced by the cross has such significance.”
Emadi grew up in Layton, Utah, but moved to Louisville to earn degrees from Southern. He authored “How Can I Serve My Church” from 9 Marks. He and his wife, Brittany, have six children.
Other elders at the church are Andrew Jones and Paul Warburg.
Andrew Jones grew up in Louisville but moved to Utah about 11 years ago to help plant a church. He is an educator in the local school district and pursuing an M.Div. degree from Southern. He also currently serves as bivocational Executive Director of the Salt Lake Baptist Association. He and his wife Ashley have five children.
Paul Warburg is a California native who has earned degrees from Liberty University. He moved to Utah in 2021 after learning that the state had one of the smallest populations of evangelical Christians in the U.S. He works as a geopolitical analyst, covering current events around the globe. He and his wife, Vienna, have one child.
Baptisms are a frequent occurrence at Water Brooks, where at least 90 have been baptized this year as of September 1.
MERIDIAN, Idaho – Nobody told Ryan Scheibel invitations to follow Jesus are no longer routinely being given at most churches.
Ever since Scheibel planted Water Brooks Church Easter Sunday in 2021, he has offered an invitation at the close of each service. At least 169 people as of Sept. 1 have made public commitments to Jesus, and 90 so far have followed through with baptism, including 34 this summer in Boise River.
“I baptize my coworkers families, people I’ve gotten to know,” Scheibel told UI Connections. “I baptized seven of our neighbors this last baptism. We had church in the park, and eight accepted Christ that day.
“When I’m sharing the gospel, especially when we’re at the park, I say in the early church, when people first gave their life to Christ one of the first things they would do to show the world they are believers, they would get baptized immediately,” Scheibel continued. “Then I hand them a towel.”
Scheibel’s Christian history might explain his focus on giving gospel invitations.
“I believed in God but wasn’t walking with Him,” Scheibel said. “I was invited to a Greg Laurie crusade and heard how God loves me, how He would transform me into a new creation; that He had forgiven me and wants to use me to reach this lost world for Him, that God gives us purpose.”
Ryan Scheibel and his growing family have established connection with their Treasure Valley neighbors and love serving the people of Idaho.
After that crusade, Scheibel said, he visited Greg Laurie’s church and got prayer from Jonathan Laurie, Greg Laurie’s son.
“When I started following the Lord the youth pastor [at Calvary Chapel San Juan Capistrano] discipled me and gave me opportunities to share my testimony,” the Water Brooks pastor continued. “I went to Calvary Chapel Bible College, took an apologetics class, and I realized how much there was to know. I fell in love with God’s Word. That’s where I felt the call of God to be in ministry my whole life. I want to live my life so other people can find Jesus.”
Scheibel in time was named part-time youth pastor at another church in Aliso Viejo while working in construction at LAX airport. When the youth ministry grew from 30 to 100 and he was injured on the job, he asked the church about going full time into youth ministry, but the church didn’t have the money for that.
“The Lord shut the doors there,” Scheibel said. “We prayed and God started opening doors in Idaho. My wife’s dream was to live in Idaho; It’s one of the fastest growing states in the nation and a great spot to raise a family. God pulled both of our heart strings.”
They moved to Eagle, Idaho, in the summer of 2020.
Today Scheibel works bivocationally at Micron Technology Inc., which manufactures computer memory and storage products. He runs the Boise-based company’s carpenter strut shop. His wife Shawna Scheibel parents and homeschools the three oldest of their four youngsters: boys ages 8 months, 5 and 7, and a girl, 3.
The couple started a non-denominational Water Brooks Church with a Bible study in their garage in August 2020, but this summer – after Scheibel had completed the North American Mission Board’s assessment protocol – the church requested affiliation with Treasure Valley Baptist Association, the Utah Idaho Southern Baptist Convention, and the national Southern Baptist Convention.
The SBC connection grew out of conversations with Jonathan Laurie. His father Greg Laurie led Harvest Ministries to affiliate with the Southern Baptist Convention in 2017. The elder Laurie had said his decision to join in Southern Baptist efforts “merely extends the reach of our fellowship within the Christian world at a time when I feel the American church desperately needs unity and a renewed passion for evangelism,” according to an article on the Christian Post website.
The younger Laurie touted the benefits of being in partnership with the nation’s largest group of evangelical churches. Scheibel also met Southern Baptist leaders in Idaho, including Clint Henry, pastor of Central Valley Baptist Church in Meridian, who is now mentoring Scheibel and four other Idaho church planters.
Several adult leaders at Water Brooks prepared for Vacation Bible School this past summer where several children experienced Jesus Christ during that week.
Henry introduced Scheibel to Michael Cooper, UISBC’s lead church planting catalyst, who introduced Scheibel to the NAMB assessment process for church planters.
“I was really encouraged when I went through the NAMB assessment,” Scheibel said. “It was the greatest church planting training I have ever seen. I learned so much!
“I am excited to point other church planters to go through NAMB church planting training,” Scheibel continued. “I love their heart for evangelism, reaching the lost with the gospel. I love how they are all about churches planting churches.”
Water Brooks Church gathers for Sunday worship in another church’s offices, which aren’t available the rest of the week. This limits the church’s growth and ability to do ministry, Scheibel said. Men, women and youth all gather in homes and other rented places throughout the week, but still ….
“It’s our prayer and vision to acquire our own church facility by 2028 so we can keep fulfilling the Great Commission,” Scheibel said. “That way we can use the building every day of the week for all our ministries and have a permanent home.”
Scheibel isn’t limiting his time to praying for a building.
“Every time I teach the Bible, I give an invitation for people to give or rededicate their life to Jesus as Lord and Savior,” the church planting pastor said. “Because of all that God has done for me, and the complete miracle He did in transforming my heart and life, I want to live life for Him so that other people can find freedom in Him also.”
Scheibel wrote 30 Days at the Water Brook: Revive and refresh your soul, which was published in 2019 by Brook of Life Publishing. In addition to 30 scripture-based ways of coping with life’s challenges, the book includes a dozen situation-specific scripture memory verses, and a “One year through the Bible reading plan.” The book is available in paperback for $10 at Amazon.com.
What is God doing through your church?
Every baptism, every person reached, every ministry started, every dollar given, and every life changed tells a part of the story of how God is working across Utah and Idaho.
The Annual Church Profile (ACP) is now available for all Utah Idaho Southern Baptist churches to complete. When you take the time to fill out your ACP, you’re not just submitting numbers, you’re helping us tell the bigger story of what God is doing through His churches across our two states. Your church’s information helps us better understand where God is moving, identify opportunities to serve churches, and give a clearer picture of the ministry happening in Idaho and Utah.
Help us tell the story. Complete your ACP today! Visit www.uisbc.org/annual-church-profile
This year, we are asking Idaho and Utah churches to “Be All In” on praying for each other and for the mission of reaching our two states. Our major emphasis for this year’s York-Dillman State Missions Offering is PRAYER and how it mobilizes us to action. We encourage every UISBC Network church to promote and participate in the Week of Prayer for State Missions, Sept. 6-13. We also invite you to visit uisbc.org/smo to order additional promotional materials and learn how the State Missions Offering stays 100% in our two states supporting Disaster Relief, Women’s Ministry, Collegiate Ministry, Salt Lake School of Theology, and many other ministries that are not funded by any other source.
