April 24, 2000
Texas churches with increased
baptisms had FAITH, worked a plan
___By Mark Wingfield
___Managing Editor
___First Baptist Church of Maud is not the most likely congregation to show up on the annual list of Texas Baptist churches with the highest number of baptisms.
___The church squeezes in 300 people on a peak Sunday and is located in a Pandhandle town of only 1,000.
___In 1998, the church baptized three converts to Christianity. But in 1999, the church baptized 77.
___The difference, according to Pastor Tim Brown, is faith.
___Not just faith in God, but putting that faith to work through an evangelistic Sunday School outreach program called FAITH. The program is promoted by LifeWay Christian Resources and has led to increased baptisms in participating churches nationwide.
___When some members of First Baptist Church of Maud went to a FAITH clinic last August, "the conversation changed" inside the church, Brown explained. "There was a complete attitude change over the whole church. Everybody began to get concerned about lost people."
___Since then, the majority of the church's members have gone through the FAITH training program, and virtually every person who lives within a 4-mile radius of the church has been confronted with the gospel.
___About 140 professions of faith in Christ were recorded last year, with slightly more than half those converts following through with baptism at First Baptist Church. Some went to other churches as well.
___"We've already talked to everybody in the town who I can imagine is lost at least once and maybe twice or three times," Brown said, explaining the church's focus in the current year is on discipleship and ministry.
___The relatively small congregation simply wasn't prepared for the influx of converts it received last year, the pastor said. Now they're working feverishly to provide adequate space and follow-up training for the bumper crop of converts.
___Bible Way Baptist Church in Dallas also was overrun with converts last year.
___The congregation that in 1998 averaged 48 in Sunday School attendance baptized 180 converts in 1999. The church had baptized only seven the previous year.
___A number of factors combined to create the dramatic increase for the African-American church located in the city's Oak Cliff community, said Pastor W.R. Smith Sr.
___Nineteen baptisms were a direct result of a youth revival that attracted up to 200 youth participants some nights. Many other baptisms resulted from a weekly outreach to children call "Take it to the Street."
___Other baptisms were the fruit of the church's participation in the FAITH outreach plan, the same plan used in Maud.
___Over all this, though, was the inspiration of Texas 2000, the Baptist General Convention's statewide emphasis on evangelism and ministry, Smith said.
___"We really got involved in Texas 2000," he explained. "That had a lot to do with our approach. We met together and talked about different approaches to reaching people. It just kind of sparked us."
___The 25-year-old congregation joined the BGCT and Southern Baptist Convention just eight years ago, Smith said, due to the influence of Dallas Baptist Association and its executive director, Gary Hearon, as well as church consultant Roosevelt Broach.
___With help from Texas Baptists, Bible Way moved into a new facility in March 1998--creating much more room than the house where the church had been meeting.
___The better building made a big difference, Smith said. "Our goal was once we got our building up, we were going after people. The Lord blessed us."
___But like the congregation at Maud, rapid results at the inner-city Dallas church created new challenges.
___Many of those who have been reached and baptized by the church have no regular means of transportation to the church, Smith explained. And it's hard to create effective discipleship training when you can't easily get to those who need to be trained in the faith and only have a small number of well-grounded believers who can teach them.
___"One of the things I'm praying is that somebody will give us a bus," he said. With a bus, the church could make rounds and bring people to worship and training events.
___Smith said he knows such a plan will be effective, because the one van the church already owns has been used that way.
___"We had a man start driving that van about five weeks ago," the pastor reported. "He got 12 adults on that van. Every adult has been now been saved and baptized."
___Innovation of another sort brought a huge evangelistic impact at Fellowship of the Metroplex, located near the border between Arlington and Grand Prairie.
___The 4-year-old contemporary congregation already has baptized more than 400 adults during its brief existence, said Pastor Craig White.
___In 1999, the church recorded 159 baptisms, giving it the 32nd-highest number of baptisms among the 6,000 congregations affiliated with the BGCT.
___Most the church's baptisms are adults, he said, because "being a young church, we don't have a lot of children who have come through the church."
___The church began with 20 people and the assistance of Rush Creek Baptist Church in Arlington. The land and building owned by the congregation were quickly outgrown and now are used for weekend youth services. The rest of the congregation gathers at a nearby junior high.
___White cited several reasons for the church's success in evangelism.
___First, he said, is the intentional focus on reaching unchurched adults. "We use our worship service as an evangelistic tool."
___Second is word-of-mouth evangelism, he continued. "Since the majority of the people who come to the church are unchurched and they receive Christ as Savior, they're the evangelists going back into the community. They know the unchurched people; most church people don't."
___Third, he said, is the power of the gospel to change lives. "Often people come and say, 'I don't know if there's anything to this God, but I know my marriage is a mess.' So they come to find out. By the time they come back a third time, they're getting connected."
___Demonstrating the power of the gospel to change lives also is a driving force behind the long-term evangelistic success of Theo Avenue Baptist Church in San Antonio.
___The Hispanic-culture church last year baptized 173 converts.
___"We go after the people; we don't wait for them to come to us," said Pastor Efraim Diaz. "The reason we have all the baptisms is we do a lot of personal work."
___Every Saturday, about 30 church members go door-to-door in the neighborhood, telling people about Jesus.
___The church draws more than 100 people to a one-hour Monday night prayer meeting each week. And then 20 to 30 people come to the church to for focused prayer from 5 a.m. to 7 a.m. Mondays through Fridays.
___"We've seen what prayer has done," he explained. "Some people say it's hard to pray for two hours. To us, it's not hard now. We can't just pray 15 minutes; people say, 'Brother Diaz, we just got started.'"
___The residents of Theo Avenue's community "want somebody to go and tell them the answer to their problems," he said. "They have a hunger in their hearts to know what is the solution to their problems. Only Christ is the answer. We tell them they have to have an experience with him personally."
___And once a person discovers that peace, the message spreads further, the pastor reported. "They themselves go tell others. You win one person for Christ, he's going to bring the whole family with him. He found something he never knew existed. Those are the ones we baptize."
___All these churches represent aspects of God's movement across Texas, said Bailey Stone, BGCT director of evangelism.
___The Texas 2000 emphasis has reminded churches of the priority of evangelism, he said. "If evangelism is not done intentionally, it will not be done at all."
___The new FAITH strategy also is helping many Texas Baptist churches, he added. "Not only are we reaching lost people, but because it's tied to the Sunday School, they're enlisting them in Sunday School and following up on them and baptizing them."
___Churches with both traditional and contemporary worship styles are doing effective evangelism in Texas, Stone said. What makes the difference in any worship style is an emphasis on prayer and a demonstration of Christ's love.
___People come to faith in Christ when Christians "begin to pray specifically, intentionally and consistently for lost people by name," Stone suggested.
___And "people continuously respond to a loving relationship," he concluded. "The problem is a lot of our churches have a lot of junk in them today. They are caught up in little, insignificant things and never understood the picture of a lost community around them.
___"The thing that really impacts a community is when Christians show how they love one another."
___
Send this story to a friend
Contents/ Masthead / Why We're Here / Links / Archive / E-mail us/ SUBSCRIBE!