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A GIRL peeps through a tunnel in the inflatible obstacle course missionary Charlie Worthy used this summer in ministry efforts in Tarrant County.
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THREE FOR ALL:
Tarrant churches share minister of missions
___By George Henson
___Staff Writer
___FORT WORTH--Three Tarrant Baptist Association churches are using a divide-and-conquer approach for local missions.
___What they are dividing is the salary and time of Charlie Worthy. What they are conquering is the neighborhoods, mainly apartments, which are nearby.
___Western Hills Baptist Church, Ridglea West Baptist Church and the Church in Cityview jointly fund Southwest Ministries, which pays the salary and expenses of Worthy. He acts as a part-time minister of missions for all three churches, but he is not an official staff member of any of them.
___While this may not be the traditional way for a church to reach out to a community, the overarching concept is a familiar one, said Bob Meade, pastor of ministries at the Church in Cityview.
___"It's classic Southern Baptist methodology," he said. "Churches working together in ministry. It's what we do with the Cooperative Program, only in microcosm."
___"What it amounts to is three churches who could not afford to have a minister of mis
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A YOUNG rock climber gets support at a church-sponsored event this summer.
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sions, but together we can," added Dick Garrett, pastor of Ridglea West Baptist Church.
___While many churches also find themselves in the same predicament, not many are trying a shared-minister approach, although these three pastors think it would work.
___"As I originally understood it, Southwest Ministries was independent of the churches and reaching out to areas where the churches may have been a little weaker," explained Garrett, who came to Fort Worth after the program was under way. "I have come to learn that Southwest Ministries is really an avenue for ministry for the people in the churches involved, and that's even better. I appreciated the ministry when I came here, and my appreciation has only grown."
___The pastors and Worthy sit down and work on targeted areas where they want to reach people. Worthy takes those goals and works out strategies to meet them. And then he goes back to the churches for the labor force to make the plans a reality--much like a traditional minister of missions would do.
___"This is something we instituted so we could get a handle on outreach to the community," Meade said.
___It also has been a boon to the people within the church walls.
___"It's been a very good way to get our church members involved in hands-on missions," said Charles McLaughlin, pastor of Western Hills Baptist Church. "The mission-mindedness of the church has been greatly enhanced."
___Drawing from a volunteer pool of three churches instead of one enables the ministry to do bigger things than otherwise might have been possible, Worthy said.
___During the summer, he rented an inflatable obstacle course, a 25-foot climbing wall, a bounce house, a spin-art booth and cotton candy stand and took it on the road for five nights.
___Monday through Friday night, children played, ate hot dogs, popcorn and cotton candy--after they had filled out registration cards with their names, addresses and telephone numbers.
___Each day, it was a different location--one night in the parking lot of each of the three churches and at two apartments where they seek to minister. Information on more than 800 new prospects was gathered through the week, but only because more than 100 volunteers helped run the event and move the equipment from place to place.
___None of the churches could have afforded the expense of the event or provided the volunteers alone, but together, it was a manageable ministry.
___None of the pastors could think of a downside to the shared ministry.
___"There's really not any problem with doing it this way," Meade said. "There are details to be worked out, such as some of the financial things, but nothing I would label as a problem."
___"This would be well worth an attempt by other churches to do," McLaughlin said. "When you look at the size of our churches, we're not very large, but what we've done together has been an effective ministry to our community."
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