By Grace Thornton
The Alabama Baptist
Parker Windle grew up with what he called a good dilemma.
He had a heart for the nations. But he felt like he was meant to be a pastor.
“I wanted to be a missions-minded pastor,” Windle said.
It was a vision that happened early. He grew up in church in Selma, then was discipled in high school at First Baptist Church, Aliceville, where he said he felt a call to missions. He carried that call with him to the University of Mobile and then Samford University’s Beeson Divinity School in Birmingham before applying to go overseas with the International Mission Board as a two-year Journeyman.
“I expected to do the Journeyman program, come back home and get a pastor job,” Windle said. “I felt that if I did a missionary term, I would be a better pastor.”
Ripe for harvest
But what he found on the other side of that plane ride was a city ripe for the harvest — and a way to mesh his two passions, he said.
“When I’d been getting ready to go, it was a decision between Paris, Rome and Japan, and in the end I picked Paris just because I’d rather learn French,” he said. “But when I moved here, the city charmed me and I fell in love with it.”
God is drawing all kinds of people to cities like Paris, Windle said.
“There’s the poorest of the poor, the richest of the rich and everyone in between,” he said. “It’s also a great place to find unreached people groups.”
That’s what happened during his Journeyman term — he found the Punjabi people. Or rather, he said, the Punjabi found him.
Church planting
“We started an Indian church with this people group because we’d had eight men who prayed to receive Christ,” Windle said.
That was something that no one had seen happen among that people group back in India, he said. “It had nothing to do with me; they were just hungry when they got out of their context, and they reached out.”
So he stayed in Paris to work with that church, but over time his reason for staying shifted into something different — something more like what he’d had in mind all along.
“I had really fallen in love with Paris and seen the opportunities for ministry here but never felt called to be a missionary as much as called to be a pastor,” Windle said.
That’s when Emmanuel International Church asked him to be its youth pastor.
He accepted. He served in that role for three years. And now for the past year and a half, he’s served as pastor.
The church — an English-speaking congregation — represents 40 nationalities on a normal Sunday. They’re part of the International Baptist Convention’s church planting ministry called Catalyst, which aims to plant English-speaking churches for internationals throughout non-English-speaking countries (see story, this page).
“The younger generation wants to live in cities, so we have a very good young adult ministry,” he said. “We try to be that home away from home for lots of people.”
Windle himself has definitely made a home here where his ministry is — he and his wife, Kyrah, whom he met through the church, were married in her home country, the Philippines, in December 2016.
“She’s embraced this calling as well and loves to share her faith,” Windle said.
And the Alabama boy from Pickens County has found that God made him both pastor and missionary and put him in Paris on purpose, he said.
“I think my temperament is more suited for ministry in urban areas even though I came from a small town,” Windle said. “I think I found my place here.”
Opportunities for pastors
Do you have a heart for missions but a desire to serve as a pastor?
“We have opportunities for people like that,” said Parker Windle, pastor of Emmanuel International Church in Paris, France.
Windle, originally from Alabama, leads a multicultural congregation that is part of the church planting ministry of the International Baptist Convention, a fellowship of English-speaking churches in Europe, the Middle East, Africa and Central and South America.
Its church planting ministry, Catalyst, focuses on starting English-speaking churches in non-English-speaking countries.
More than 200 million people are living outside their home country, according to the United Nations. So finding them in strategic cities is an incredible way to reach unreached people groups, Windle said.
“If someone’s gifts are preaching and teaching and they feel comfortable in a multicultural atmosphere, there’s not a better group to serve with,” he said. “We’re working right now to recruit church planters to come and either plant a new church or pastor a church that needs a leader.”
They’re currently looking for people to lead church work in Paris, Amsterdam, Barcelona and other strategic cities, Windle said.
“When I look at these places, I see a ripe harvest,” he said. “There’s a lot of potential here.”
For more information, visit internationalchurchplanting.com. (TAB)
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