It’s not often that the nations move to your backyard, especially if your backyard is a rural hillside in West Tennessee. But for Danny Sinquefield of the Tennessee Baptist Mission Board, a dream has become a reality with Blue Oval City, a new Ford Motor Company plant under construction in the tiny town of Stanton (population 414). The plant is estimated to attract 90,000 residents in the next 10 years.
Sinquefield said, “This is a once-in-a-lifetime event for West Tennessee. Most of our churches … are in small, rural and declining cities, and they have been for years, for decades. So, the vision is, what an opportunity God is bringing to us with this massive influx of people from not just from the deep South, but from across our country, and some of them from around the world.”
A restaurant in Stanton, has already begun hosting regular prayer breakfasts to pray for the thousands of people about to move into the area.
God is already at work in this up-and-coming city. Even though construction is incomplete, churches have taken the opportunity to begin evangelizing, building relationships and making connections throughout the Blue Oval City.
Mission teams are also on the ground, completing hands-on projects like prepping playgrounds and doing maintenance, all in effort to help prepare churches to reach the masses that are on their way to the area.