Governor Publicizes January Face of Arkansas – Arkansas Governor

LITTLE ROCK, Ark. — Governor Sarah Huckabee Sanders right this moment introduced the second installment of Faces of Arkansas, a month-to-month collection highlighting Arkansans whose portraits and tales are displayed on the entrance to the Governor’s workplace as a reminder of who the Governor and her group serve each day: the folks of Arkansas. The collection was launched to maintain the main focus of public service rooted within the people and communities that make the state what it’s.

Each month, a unique Arkansan is featured by means of a written profile, portrait pictures, and a brief video, with their framed picture hanging contained in the Capitol. Selections are based mostly on people who make Arkansas operate — whether or not by serving because the heartbeat of their native communities, overcoming obstacles to attain their desires, or enjoying a necessary position of their business. 

This installment options Michael Kornegay of El Dorado, whose work reminds us that among the largest connections usually start within the smallest locations.

Michael Kornegay – Small Towns, Big Connections

In small cities, connection doesn’t require effort; it requires consideration. You study names shortly. You don’t disappear simply. Community isn’t one thing you schedule; it occurs whether or not you’re prepared or not.

Michael Kornegay understands this type of tempo. As Connections Pastor at El Dorado First Assembly, his position is about noticing who’s there: who simply walked up, who would possibly want a hand, who’s searching for a manner in.

That intuition is central to the ten:33 Initiative, a statewide pilot program launched by Governor Sanders in October to unite authorities companies, neighborhood companions, and native church buildings. Union County is one in all three pilot counties chosen for the initiative’s first yr, alongside Pulaski and Pope counties. For Kornegay and El Dorado First Assembly, the work seems like a continuation of what they’ve at all times completed: exhibiting up, working alongside folks, and assembly long-term wants.

Kornegay didn’t plan on changing into a pastor. He studied pictures and videography, getting ready for a profession behind the digital camera. But in 2013, simply earlier than ending his bachelor’s diploma at Southern Arkansas University, he felt a calling towards ministry with out clear directions.

“I felt like the Lord wanted me to go into ministry,” Kornegay stated. “And my first thought was, how do you do that without a ministry degree?”
When he introduced that feeling to his pastor on the time, the response shocked him. He was advised to not do it. Ministry, he was warned, is difficult. People don’t come to pastors when life is clean; they arrive when there’s disaster and chaos.

Rather than dashing into one thing he wasn’t ready for, Kornegay waited. Seven years handed earlier than he stepped into ministry, a stretch he now realizes was preparation. That readability arrived in March of 2020, the identical day the world shut down.

Everything modified directly. Churches moved on-line in a single day. Community grew to become fragile. Connection needed to be intentional. Kornegay’s media background grew to become unexpectedly helpful.

Today, his work is rooted in serving to folks discover their place, usually from the day they stroll by means of the church doorways. He builds programs so nobody will get misplaced within the crowd, then factors them towards life teams, the place religion and neighborhood are practiced past church pews.

“We’ll never be able to pastor everyone,” Kornegay stated. “That happens in small groups, people doing life together.”

That similar mannequin of relationship-driven care sits on the coronary heart of the ten:33 Initiative, which makes use of Restore Hope’s HopeHub, a collaborative case-management and data-sharing platform energetic in 19 Arkansas counties. Through HopeHub, people join with a neighborhood advocate who mobilizes religion and neighborhood companions to deal with quick wants whereas constructing long-term stability in housing, healthcare, and employment, then are guided to Arkansas LAUNCH for job alternatives, coaching, and profession help.

Pastor Daniel Egger of El Dorado First Assembly describes this work as deeply rooted in religion, a core mission of the church. For Kornegay, the initiative displays a perception he’s lived out regionally and globally: connection adjustments lives. Through relationships shaped organically, he has traveled from South Arkansas to South Africa and components of Asia, strolling alongside church leaders and serving to new believers develop into roles they didn’t but really feel prepared for.

Each journey started with dialog, a relationship, an open door. In one occasion, a connection led abroad, unknowingly fulfilling a imaginative and prescient prayed over lengthy earlier than the chance appeared. El Dorado, on this manner, turns into greater than a dot on the map. It features as a hub, the place sources, relationships, and folks transfer outward into South Arkansas and past, huge connections rooted in a small place.

Kornegay doesn’t describe these alternatives as targets he pursued. He talks about them as doorways that opened. For him, the guiding philosophy is easy: availability. “The light’s always green until it’s red,” he stated. “If it fits the mission, we say yes.”

When alternatives come up, whether or not by means of the ten:33 Initiative, a neighborhood partnership, or a dialog the world over, the mission doesn’t shift with scale or geography. It’s about making God recognized, pointing folks towards religion, and taking accountability for every alternative.

Rooted in his personal Arkansas story, Kornegay was raised in Hot Springs and formed by years in Magnolia, the place he fell in love with small-town life – how everybody seems like household.

In a small Arkansas city with international attain, Michael Kornegay has realized that the largest connections usually start with a easy willingness to say sure.

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