September 2, 2002

Colleyville church finds safe Harber with five-fold growth
___By Toby Druin
___Editor Emeritus
___COLLEYVILLE--Call it serendipity or God's will, but a chance stop last spring by Frank Harber at First Baptist Church of Colleyville has given him a new career as pastor and a new direction--upward--for the church.
___Early last year, Harber and his wife were looking for a home nearer DFW International Airport. A former vocational evangelist and then assistant professor of evangelism at Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary, Harber was on the road to preaching assignments almost

AT FIRST BAPTIST CHURCH of Colleyville, Pastor Frank Harber uses visual aids like this shipwrecked cruiser to illustrate his sermon series. His current series on sin draws parallels to the television show "Gilligan's Island."

every weekend. He was gone so much on Sundays that his wife hadn't heard him preach for five months, he recalled.
___While searching the area near the airport for a homesite, he said, he stopped at the Colleyville church to ask for directions. Along with directions, however, he got an invitation to preach at the church on Mother's Day. Then the chairman of the church's pastor-search committee called to ask if they could talk to him about becoming the church's pastor.
___"I had never pastored before, had never wanted to be a pastor, and this church had been a victim of infighting and a declining budget and its facilities were in bad shape," Harber explained.
___His wife, Becky, urged him to talk to the committee, and a few weeks later he had become the new pastor of the church.
___Harber is a native of Longview and a graduate of the University of Texas at Tyler. In his youth, he was an avowed atheist but became a Christian while doing a historical investigation in the hope of disproving Christianity. That led him to become an evangelist. He has preached in more than 600 churches and to more than 2 million people, including an address at Billy Graham's Amsterdam 2000 on "The Evangelist and Apologetics."
___ He earned a master's degree and doctor of philosophy degree in evangelism at Southwestern and was an adjunct instructor there for nine years before joining the faculty.
___"I had no pastoral experience when I came here," he said, "but I started off like I knew what I was doing."
___Whatever it was, it worked and has continued to work.
___The church, which was drawing about 400 people for Sunday morning worship when Harber became pastor, had more than 1,800 in Sunday School in early August and was expecting more than 2,000 when school got under way and everyone returned from vacations.
___On the Sunday when attendance topped 1,800, the offering totaled $289,000, and Harber baptized 14 converts.
___"After I preached on stewardship, we essentially doubled our budget," Harber said.
___He gives much of the credit for the upsurge to his staff.
___"I had a great staff when I got here," he said. "They just needed to believe in themselves and be challenged. The church had great people and great leaders, but they needed a challenge to reach their potential."
___When Harber was a student at Southwestern Seminary, one of his preaching professors, Jimmie Nelson, told him he already was a "good" preacher but could be "great" if he would learn to use his imagination.
___Harber has put that advice to work at Colleyville, he said, by asking his staff to rate their areas of work, including the facilities, as below average, average or above average. Armed with their assessments, he and the staff have set out to make changes wherever necessary.
___For example, the church committed to being a "family" congregation, focusing on children and youth. But that meant some major changes had to be made.
___"Our facilities for children and youth and in the nursery were terrible," Harber said. In a year's time, however, with most of the work done by church members and at relatively minimal cost, those same facilities now look nearly state of the art.
___The youth area, called "The Box," resembles a professional quality recording studio; the children's area, "The Jungle," which has taken on new life and a new look in the church's old sanctuary, is a replica of a rain forest with a play area unrivaled by themed children's restaurants. It's made available for birthday parties, which has proved to be a great outreach tool. Volunteers were finishing sprucing up the nursery area in early August.
___"I want any child who comes to visit here to tell his or her parents when they go home, 'I want to join that church,'" Harber said.
___The biggest surprise to him as a pastor has been how hard it is, he said. "There is always something to do. As a professor of evangelism, I left my work and went home at night. As pastor, it's always with me."
___He also was surprised to learn that not everyone likes him, he said, but he tries to be approachable to all his members.
___His model for the pastorate is Edwin Young at Second Baptist Church in Houston, with whom he frequently talks.
___Sports rhetoric slides into much of what Harber says and does. A staff retreat recently was held in the Dallas Cowboys' locker room. He sees himself as building a great team and winning the championship by winning people to Christ and nurturing them as a church.
___"I'm the pastor, and the buck stops with me," he said. "I get both the blame and the credit for what happens because I am accountable for direction, but I want to be the player on this team who gets the assist."
___That also means he has had to rethink some of his evangelism approaches, he said.
___"Being pastor has changed me. Now when I preach, I know my people. I know what they need to hear. They say I have more compassion. The people get in your heart. It's different when you are their pastor."
___The church gave him the freedom to continue to preach crusades, he said, but he has not done so. He concentrates on the job, preaching many sermon series, including a current one on "Mystery Island," a takeoff on the TV show "Gilligan's Island." Each of the characters on the island is indicative of a particular sin, according to Harber's outline. To reinforce the theme, the sanctuary platform currently features a grass hut and a beached cabin cruiser as props.
___The services are advertised on the church's weekly radio program, "The Real Life with Frank Harber," carried on 100.7-FM, and in flashy mailings sent to thousands in the Colleyville area.
___"I've been ADD since I was a kid; I am hyper, driven," Harber said. "I am in my element here. The work is never done; nobody can do the job. But it's a privilege. I would do it for free."

___

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