April 2, 2001

THE COWBOY BAND (right) from the Cowboy Church of Ellis Country providing music during the closing session. Bob Roberts spoke about producing quality disciples.

TURN ON THE LIGHT:
Need for new churches stressed
___By Ferrell Foster
___Texas Baptist Communications
___WACO--"Go back to your community and hang out there," participants in the Light Up Texas church starting conference were admonished March 22-24.
___One of Texas Baptists' best-known church starters, Tillie Burgin of Mission Metroplex in Arlington, brought the closing address at the conference.

HOWARD ANDERSON

___She explained that the strategy of Mission Arlington and now Mission Metroplex is simple: "We hang out on the property and hover around John 3:16."
___"There's nowhere in the Bible it says come to church," Burgin said. "It says go."
___Further, the most important word in the John 3:16 passage is "whosoever," Burgin asserted, declaring that no one can be "thrown away."
___"It's about us helping everyone" to know the love of Jesus, she said. "Go back to your community and hang out there."
___The Waco conference was sponsored by the Church Starting Center of the Baptist General Convention of Texas.
___An estimated 10 million people in Texas are not affiliated with any church, noted BGCT Executive Director Charles Wade in the opening address. More churches are needed to reach those people, but Wade reminded the gathering that "this is God's work."
___Those who start churches are allowing Jesus to "flesh out his passion" for touching broken hearts in a community, Wade said. "You have continued the incarnation."
___The first words of God recorded in Scripture are, "Let there be light," noted E.B. Brooks, coordinator of the BGCT's church missions and evangelism section. "If we're

JORGE CAMACHE

going to light up Texas, we're going to have to start glowing with a God-kind of glow.
___"We can light up Texas. We must light up Texas."
___Howard Anderson, senior pastor of Singing Hills Baptist Church in Dallas, expounded on that theme in the conference's second plenary session. Texas Baptists desire that "every person in every community, in every city, in every county will be able to say, 'I see the light,'" he said.
___Texas Baptists are encouraging church starters to "keep turning on the light of Christ," Anderson said, while existing churches "need to keep turning up the light of Christ."
___Then "the lost can turn to the light," he said. "When they do that, they will see that Jesus is the living light, a liberating light and a lasting light.
___"We have to light up Texas because of who Jesus is," Anderson said.
___Bob Roberts, pastor of NorthWood Church in Keller, spoke frankly about his own growth from being concerned about the "kingdom of Bob" to being obsessed with the kingdom of God.
___Roberts said he has learned that the kingdom of God is internal first, then external. "We have to be concerned with the quality of what we're producing," he said in reference to making disciples. "We cannot cry success until we change the world with disciples."
___The church often is "obsessed with conversion and not transformation," Roberts said.

TILLIE BURGIN

The reason the gospel holds so little power is that people are not being transformed. "I think we've got to be concerned about transformation, ... radically from within."
___Kingdom ministry also is about being "missional," Roberts said. It's not just about sending money for missions or going on mission trips. He talked about NorthWood's efforts in an unnamed Asian country and how it has taken hold of his life and influenced his ministry.
___Believers, he said, should be "more obsessed with church mothering, not church planting."
___The kingdom of God also is communal, Roberts said. In America, the church has become a place to show off. The kingdom means "we are in this thing together." As community is formed, "it's no longer me."
___Jorge Camacho, a church consultant for Union Baptist Association in Houston, spoke about the bigness of Texas, with its tall buildings, broad highways and impressive stadiums. The spiritual needs, he said, also are big.
___Texas Baptists can meet those needs by following the pattern of Nehemiah in the Old Testament, Camacho said.
___Step one is to "evaluate our current reality." Changes are taking place in Texas, Camacho said. There are more than 100 language groups in Texas, but only about 40 are involved in the life of Texas Baptists.
___"The statistics tell us what we're doing is not enough," he said.
___Step two is to have a compassionate heart. Because the state is changing, Texas Baptists cannot continue with "business as usual" if they are going to reach the different segments of the population, including young postmoderns, those living in multi-family dwellings and the various ethnic groups, Camacho said.
___Step three is to "understand God's vision," he added, noting that it is only during times of "focused prayer" that God reveals his vision.
___"To claim Texas for Christ is going to take a vision greater than you and me. It's going to take a God-sized vision."
___

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