October 30, 2000
Build-as-you-go model enables
church growth along Rio Grande
___PRESIDIO--Iglesia Bautista Emanuel "baptized" the improve-as-you-go philosophy that shapes life along the Rio Grande.
___The Spanish-speaking congregation started in 1991 and met in members' homes at first. Eventually, a dozen members of the church teamed up to buy a piece of property on their own, on behalf of the church. Later, the church bought additional adjoining property.
___Still, funds were tight, and the prospect of placing a building on the property seemedremote.
___But Ed Jennings, who was a pastor in Presidio for more than 11 years before he became director of missions for Big Bend Baptist Association, got to thinking about how families in the area built their homes.
___"When I lived here, I saw how the population grows," he recalled. "People improve as they go: They buy a piece of property, and they put a travel trailer or a mobile home on it. They live there while they build their home. Maybe they build half the home at a time.
___"That concept struck me. Why couldn't we do that with churches?"
___So, he proposed the idea to Emanuel, and the members agreed. The Baptist General Convention of Texas' River Ministry helped with seed money and volunteers.
___"We got a mobile home for Emanuel," Jennings reported. "It was filthy. You wouldn't put your chickens in it. But they cleaned it up, and they met there."
___Then River Ministry began to provide workers to help Emanuel construct its permanent building.
___Texas Baptist volunteers arrived to help pour the slab foundation. Others offered to help put on a roof after church members put up walls, windows and doors. Within a few months, the building-in-progress was ready for Texas Baptists to raise the roof and help finish out the inside of the building. Later, church members and volunteers repeated the process to build the church's fellowship hall.
___This model for church construction is a key to successfully strengthening churches all up and down the Rio Grande, Jennings stressed. That contrasts with situations in which outsiders arrive to do all the work for the congregation--a "turnkey" job that often as not results in weak, stigmatized congregations.
___"This congregation has their life, their work," he said. "They're invested in this because they were enabled to do for themselves.
___"Someone didn't just come in and put this building up for them and say, 'Here's the key.' We've seen that--and the problems that come with it."
___Instead of sitting back and waiting for others to do its work, the small Presidio church believes it can do great things for and with God, like sponsor six mission congregations.
___"Texas Baptists have been part of all this," not by doing all the work, but by enabling fellow Baptists in Presidio to serve God and minister to their community, Jennings said.
___Iglesia Bautista Emanuel, its build-it-as-you-go building and its mission congregations reflect three ideals of River Ministry, observed Dexton Shores, the ministry's director.
___First is the indigenous principle. Ministry along the Rio Grande succeeds best when local people are empowered and freed to do the ministry themselves, in a manner that meets the needs of the people in the community.
___Second is the concept of partnership.
___"The best way to help is to work alongside them, but let them take the lead," Shores said. "That way, they have a sense of ownership" over the ministry.
___Third is "kingdom mentality," he added. "We've got to look for how God is at work and get in step with that."
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