HARRISON, Ark. – David Graham has been part of about every size church imaginable. He grew up in a church with around 2,000 in attendance, was youth pastor in a church of 1,250, was associate pastor of a church of 850 and has been the senior pastor of churches of 38 and of 250.
He now serves as the executive director/associational mission strategist of the North Arkansas Baptist Association. He began the role in February of 2018, following a 12-year stint serving as pastor of Eastside Baptist Church in Collinsville, Oklahoma.
Graham has been in full-time ministry since 1989 serving on staff in various roles at churches in Arkansas and Oklahoma, as well as living in the Dallas area and traveling all over the country while serving as the Associate Director of Conferences for the nationwide conference ministry of Christian speaker, Dawson McAllister.
Though he grew up in Oklahoma and has been in and out of the Natural State, Graham said Arkansas is home.
“Arkansas is where my heart is,” he said. “Arkansas has always been home to us.”
Graham said one goal of all associational missionaries is to encourage and strengthen the pastors and the churches, providing any type of training or coordination to make that happen.
“I get to work with the greatest pastors and greatest churches on the planet. I love being here. It is just an amazing association. The unity, the fellowship, the cooperative spirit here is just amazing,” he said, touting Royce Sweatman and Bob Johnson, the prior associational leaders who laid the foundation ahead of him. “They laid an incredible foundation and I got to walk into a wonderful gift.”
Locally they are involved in several recovery ministries, with ministries that care for the elderly, with the local pregnancy center, with the Arkansas Baptist Ranch. They help fund churches from their association as they go on mission trips. One unique ministry of the North Arkansas Baptist Association is its strong involvement in supporting churches in Winnipeg, Canada. Graham said it is only a 15-hour drive, making it more convenient for the association’s smaller churches to be involved in missions. They can just jump in a van and drive up. He described Winnipeg as a city full of various ethnicities and cultures with more than 120 nations being represented.
When they first started working with churches in Winnipeg five years ago, Graham said there were only nine Southern Baptist Convention churches for 850,000 people. In those five years, they have seen the number of churches grow to 25.
Graham also noted their partnership with the Bayou Baptist Association in Houma, Louisiana. The North Arkansas Baptist Association goes there for missions and the folks in Houma travel to Arkansas for missions.
“I am absolutely blessed to be in this association, blessed by the pastors and churches that are here. It’s unlike anything I’ve ever experienced before,” Graham said.
Graham and his wife, Rhonda, have been married since 1990. They have two children, Kailey and Gabe.
For more information about the North Arkansas Baptist Association, check out nabaptist.org.