November 6, 2000
CELEBRATE CORPUS CHRISTI:
Heavenly Sonlight
___By Ferrell Foster
___Texas Baptist Communications
___CORPUS CHRISTI--Offering face painting, pony rides, puppet shows, car washes, cakewalks and free food, many Corpus Christi area churches made Saturday, Oct. 28, a day of fun and games. And people from their communities came out by the hundreds.
___About 40 Corpus Christi Baptist Association churches participated in "CelebrateCorpus Christi," an effort to reach out to unchurched people in the area prior to and during the Baptist General Convention of Texas annual session Oct. 30-31. Saturday was the biggest day of the emphasis, but other events were scheduled through the final day of the convention, Halloween.
TEXAS BAPTISTS got a warm welcome in Corpus Christi, and they left smiles on faces through ministry efforts in the area. (BGCT photos)
___Each church planned its own efforts. Some opted for the fun and games associated with block parties and "fall festivals." Others conducted prayer walks, door-to-door evangelism and community surveys. The churches came together Saturday evening for a youth rally at Cole Park amphitheater on the shore of the Gulf of Mexico.
___On-site reports indicated turnouts in the hundreds.
___Windsor Park Baptist Church in Corpus Christi printed 300 meal tickets, Pastor Bobby Underhill reported. When those had been used once, they were recycled for use again.
___Iglesia Bautista Agua Cristalina, a new congregation in northwest Corpus Christi, attracted 101 visitors to its celebration. And New Community Church, another fledgling congregation, welcomed at least 150 people at Bridge Pointe Landing apartment complex in Portland, across the bay from Corpus.
___First Baptist in Portland entertained about 400 children at its annual Fall Festival, which offered an alternative to traditional Halloween activities.
___More than 500 people attended the youth rally, which featured Christian music and a sermon by Lynn Floyd, pastor of New Community Church. About 25 people made professions of faith in Christ, said Forrest Smith, interim director of missions for Corpus Christi Baptist Association.
___Texas Baptists provided $30,000 to help fund the evangelistic effort, Smith said. The association used a portion of the money to fund the youth rally and provided $400 to each church that planned events for the day.
___Shane Kinnison, project chairman and pastor of Parkdale Baptist Church in Corpus Christi, said: "What Texas Baptists have helped us do this weekend will carry Corpus Christ Baptist Association down the road several months. ... I'm so thrilled. It really is the body of Christ coming together."
___Many of the activities in Celebrate Corpus Christi centered on giving unchurched people a chance to get to know the people in the churches. "These churches are building relationships with their neighbors" as they provide "safe, wholesome activities" for families, Kinnison said.
___"We believe this is seed-scattering work," he added. "These are gospel seeds that are being scattered."
___Helping unchurched people get to know Baptist churches is important, because only about 25 percent of people in the region have a church home, Smith said. And Baptist churches make up a small percentage of that amount.
___On a "very good" Sunday morning, about 9,000 people will worship in Baptist churches in Nueces County, which has a population of about 330,000, Smith said. That's about 2 percent.
___Baptists from around the state came to Corpus to help in the effort.
A YOUNG PRINCESS for a day gets a faith lift from a Baptist volunteer. (BGCT photo)
___Christopher Clemens, youth minister at McCombs Baptist Church in El Paso, said a busload of 33 people from El Paso Baptist Association scattered out to help. Last year, Texas Baptists journeyed to El Paso to help with a similar emphasis prior to the 1999 convention. "We're returning the favor," Clemens said.
___Kinnison marveled at the commitment of the El Paso group. They traveled 15 hours on the bus and arrived at about 2 a.m. Saturday, slept on a hard gymnasium floor, got up at 7 a.m., worked all day and into the night and planned to leave the next morning to be back in time to go to their jobs on Monday, he noted.
___"That is the work of the Holy Spirit," he said. "It's something we can't fabricate."
___A contingent of students from eight college and university campuses also joined in the effort, Kinnison said.
___Windsor Park Baptist Church offered a wide variety of fun activities and food for children. All the work was worth the effort in order to "see the expressions on the kids' faces and the expressions on parents' faces when you tell them it's free." Underhill said. Other churches in the area often use such events as fund-raisers, he added, noting parents were "shocked we're not charging."
___The church used no "high-pressure" sales techniques, Underhill said. Church members simply tried to let people know they loved them.
___New Community Church in Portland followed the same basic approach, although its activities occurred at an apartment complex rather than a church site. The church is unable to witness door-to-door in the complex, but members sought to "let people know New Community Church wants to minister to them" through fun family activities, Floyd said.
___A number of college students helped New Community. At one table, several of them made "power band" bracelets for children. Each child heard about the need for salvation and God's provision for their sins as the students added beads to the bracelets.
___At least half a dozen families indicated to Floyd that they want to talk to him more about the church, he said.
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