March 26, 2001
Dying church brought back to life
by determination of two women
___By George Henson
___Staff Writer
___FARMERSVILLE--Christians around the world celebrate the miraculous birth in Bethlehem 2000 years ago.
___Now a group of Texas Baptists are celebrating the miraculous rebirth of a church in another Bethlehem.
___And like the birth of the baby Jesus in Bethlehem of Israel, those associated with Bethlehem Baptist Church of Farmersville believe God has made himself present in a surprising way.
___The Farmersville church had seen its numbers whittled away until only two women--Betty Meeks and pianist Clara Kinamon--were still attending.
___They refused to let the rural church close its doors, though.
___"I told Clara, 'We're not going to lock these doors as long as you can play that piano and I can sing a little bit,'" Meeks recalled.
___Billy Harris, a retired pastor who had served First Baptist Church in Sachse for 46 years, was asked to come and preach one Sunday for the two women.
___Harris told them he would come, but he wanted them to get on their telephones and invite other people to attend also. They did as they were asked, and Harris found 30 people present that morning.
___"I preached my sermon that morning, but the surprising thing was when we gave the altar call a couple joined. They said they wanted to be a part of what we were doing here. I told them this was supposed to be a one-time thing for me, but I would come back if they would," Harris recalled.
___That Sunday in April 1998 changed Harris' retirement plans--but it also changed the church. He preached for months on a week-to-week basis until the church called him as pastor in the fall of that year.
___"I had no intention of pastoring again," Harris said. "It started out as a one-week deal, but things kept happening. It was something you couldn't back away from."
___Things are continuing to happen at Bethlehem, something Rick Ballard says can only be from God. Ballard is director of church growth for Collin Baptist Association.
___"You've got to know how to get there to get there," Ballard said of the church's location. "They're on an old rock road off another rock road. They just defy every principle of church growth. They have probably the worst location possible; they don't do a lot of publicity. It's really one of God's little miracles."
___The miracle isn't really so small anymore.
___In the two years since Harris has been called as pastor, the church has built an education building, added offices to the sanctuary building and renovated the existing sanctuary. The construction is all paid, and only the renovation is still being paid off.
___There's only one problem--the church now needs to build again.
___The church in the middle of nowhere, with only a rock road and a graveyard for company, has grown to 275 in attendance. The sanctuary is crowded. The Sunday School rooms are crowded. One men's class was so cramped for space that they pooled their knowledge and resources and built their own free-standing building for their class.
___"We come in almost every Sunday and find it comfortably filled and sometimes overfilled where folks are not quite so comfortable," Harris said. "But if people know you are planning to do something about it, they'll keep coming until you're able to."
___Plans are now being finalized for a new sanctuary that will hold about 600 people.
___One of the most amazing things is that the growth has come in the absence of any new construction in the area, and the growth has not come at the expense of other area churches' memberships rolls.
___Over the past two years, Harris has baptized 188 new believers. Seventeen people joined the church on one recent Sunday.
___"This is something that God's done," Harris emphasized. "There's no other way to explain it. We just thank God for allowing us to have a little part in it."
___To illustrate just how he feels about this, the pastor tells a fishing story.
___He recalls once seeing a father and a small boy showing off a huge catfish. The boy kept saying, "Look at the big fish we caught."
___"Now, that boy knew he couldn't ever have caught that big fish," Harris explained. "What he was saying was he was proud to be with his daddy when he caught it. When someone gets saved, that's the way I think of it--'Thank you, Daddy, for allowing me to be there.'"
___Harris agrees the church is unlikely to be found by accident, but he says that encourages the people who go there to tell people where it is and invite them to come.
___"We're just trying to do it God's way--telling people that we love them and that we want them to come to church," Harris said.
___About 20 people turn out for visitation most Tuesday nights, and that's one of the most exciting nights of the week to the people who participate, he said.
___"That's where people are getting saved--out there in people's homes and in their fields. Then they bring them here and we baptize them. But out there is where it's happening," Harris said.
___While the church is hard to find, and while the rock road can make a car dirty in a hurry, it's not that big an obstacle, Harris said.
___"A church's success is not what surrounds you, but the church itself. If you have a warm-hearted, loving people, you're going to have a nice church," Harris said. "Nobody minds driving five miles out into the country as long as they know that when they get to church they are going to feel loved and are blessed."
___Harris said the church thinks of itself as "God's little lighthouse in the country."
___"It may not be the biggest thing in the world, what's happened here, but to us it's a miracle to have come so far so quick," he said.
___Ballard agreed. "If you were to pick the least likely spot for God to do a work, that would probably be it. If it can be done there, it should be an encouragement to all of us that God is alive and well."
___Both men agree that God is alive and well in Bethlehem--where miracles never cease.
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