CommonCall: Nobody left behind

First Baptist Church in Pittsburg built a 27,000-square-foot facility that included high-quality educational space for preschoolers and children, as well as a worship space geared toward a young audience. "It reached new people," said John Borum, associate pastor at First Baptist until he became assistant vice president for enrollment at Dallas Baptist University. (Photo / David Clanton)

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On a Sunday morning more than nine years ago, Pastor Steve Packer looked at his congregation at First Baptist Church in Pittsburg and saw the future.

Packer 300At epiphany at age 60 led Pastor Steve Packer to launch a new service for young people and ultimately build a new facility geared toward a young audience. (Photo / David Clanton)Packer—then age 60—counted fewer than two dozen young people among the 250 worshippers. And he recognized since he had arrived at the church in 1995, he had conducted about 300 funerals.

“That’s when I realized we were a dying church,” he said. “I said, ‘If we don’t do something, we’ll be nothing but old people remembering how it used to be.’”

So, after studying growing churches that were reaching young people effectively, he led the congregation to launch a Sunday morning contemporary service in the church’s gymnasium.

“I had been here long enough to say, ‘This is what we’re going to do,’” he recalled.

But he assured longstanding members the new service would be in addition to the traditional worship service in the church’s sanctuary they loved.

“I told them, ‘No person will be left behind,’” he said.

For about seven years, worship leaders and volunteers set up chairs and a platform in the gymnasium every Sunday morning for the contemporary worship service.

‘We need a place for the young people to worship’


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About three years ago, Packer talked to lay leader Bo Pilgrim—former chicken magnate, principal shareholder of a bank holding company and philanthropist—about launching a long-delayed capital building campaign at church.

“We don’t need a colonial-style church sanctuary,” Packer recalled saying. “We need a place for the young people to worship.”

So, First Baptist Church built The Lighthouse, a 27,000-square-foot facility that includes a 350-seat worship center and educational space.

“But every time we spent money on the new building, we also spent on the established facility,” Packer recalled.

PFBC Lighthouse 300First Baptist Church in Pittsburg built The Lighthouse, a $6.5 million facility with a contemporary worship venue and educational space for children and preschoolers. (Photo / David Clanton)Older members gave generously to support construction of the new $6.5 million facility.

“They just knew it’s what we needed to do,” he said, noting the need not only for worship space that would appeal to a younger audience, but also high-quality educational space for preschool and children on Sunday and for the church’s weekday ministry to preschoolers, First Kids Academy.

Drawn by the energy in worship

The contemporary worship service not only attracted young couples with children, teenagers and students at the local junior college, but also drew some older church members.

“A lot of our older adults love the energy here,” Packer said. “They might prefer the traditional music, but they love what they see happening at The Lighthouse.”

The high-energy worship service grew so quickly, the church added an additional worship service at The Lighthouse. First Baptist provides two 9 a.m. worship services—a traditional service in the sanctuary that attracts about 100 members and a contemporary service at The Lighthouse that draws around 190. About 220 attend a second contemporary service at 11 a.m.

Handbell choir 300Although members of First Baptist Church in Pittsburg praise the energy and excitement of worship in The Lighthouse, the congregation’s contemporary worship venue, the church also offers traditional worship opportunities, as evidenced by its handbell choir. (Photo / David Clanton)Worshippers at each of the three worship services hear a sermon on the same subject and from the same Scripture, with Packer and another minister and staff alternating preaching duties in the two simultaneous 9 a.m. services.

But the worshippers’ experience differs. Christians who enjoy familiar hymns, choral anthems, handbell choirs and established traditions feel at home in the worship service held in the sanctuary. The two services at The Lighthouse, on the other hand, are designed with first-time guests in mind, so nobody attending feels like an outsider, worship planners explained.

Building and planning for people not yet in church

Worship services at The Lighthouse succeeded because the church prioritized them, said John Borum, associate pastor at First Baptist until he left a few months ago to become assistant vice president for enrollment at Dallas Baptist University. He credits the church’s willingness to construct a building and plan Sunday morning worship for people who were not already part of the congregation.

Packer 200The Lighthouse features a 350-seat state-of-the-art worship center, Pastor Steve Packer notes. (Photo / David Clanton)“The church made it as a Sunday morning alternative,” scheduled for the convenience of nonattenders, rather than for the convenience of people already involved in church, Borum observed. “It proved itself. It reached new people.”

While worship services are geared toward guests, the church focuses on integrating new members and frequent attenders into the life of the congregation. Four times a year, First Baptist sponsors a “Service Sunday,” when it invites members to make a “seasonal commitment” to some church-related responsibility.

“We found people would come here, but they were not always consistent. They might attend twice a month,” Borum said. “By giving them a job, they have a reason to be here. Once you’ve signed up, you’ve committed to get up when the alarm goes off on Sunday morning. It’s a way of transitioning people from being guests to becoming hosts.”

First Baptist also offers a class for new members, providing “a safe place to be totally ignorant about the gospel,” he added.

The intentional assimilation process is reaching its objective, Packer observed. “These are people who are sticking.”

New needs with new people

As the church has expanded from its base of older adults who have attended church for decades to include children, teenagers and young adults with little or no church background, ministry opportunities also have expanded.

“If you have a senior adult church, you need a good hospital visitation ministry and somebody to care for the needs of the people. If you have a congregation of young adults, you need to help them deal with all the problems young people face,” Packer said.

The desire to minister to young adults—not only those who attend The Lighthouse, but others in surrounding communities who may need help—prompted First Baptist to launch Life Solutions, a counseling ministry led by George and Mary Ann Winegeart.

Life Solutions offers individual and family counseling in a building near the church campus but separated from all other facilities to protect the privacy of clients, who receive services on a sliding scale based on their ability to pay.

“We had 83 scheduled counseling sessions last year,” said George Winegeart, a licensed marriage and family therapist. “It’s growing faster than I thought it would.”

That’s the same refrain Packer echoes when he thinks about the changes at First Baptist in the last nine years.

“It all started from an epiphany at age 60,” he said.

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