Today’s From the States features items from:
Baptist Message (Louisiana)
The Christian Index (Georgia)
Southern Baptist TEXAN
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African-American missions
conference challenges La. Pastors
By Staff
WOODWORTH, La. (Baptist Message) — Tony Mathews reminded 45 pastors and their spouses of their responsibility to live out God’s missiological plan for the world during the first ever Louisiana Baptist African-American Missions Conference.
“The personnel of the mission agenda is us,” the president of the Southern Baptists of Texas Convention African American Fellowship said during one of his messages. “You are employed by Jesus.”
Throughout the conference, Mathews drew from his experiences of participating in mission trips with North Garland Baptist Church where he serves as pastor to challenge those in attendance to realize how they can influence the ends of the earth. Near the end of his final message, Mathews challenged pastors to join him in a mission trip to Ecuador in October, with two responding to go.
Held Sept. 8-9 at Tall Timbers Conference Center, the retreat also featured intensive training led by Mathews and worship led by Thomas Keys, worship minister at Calvary Baptist Church in Shreveport. The pastors also heard encouraging words in breakout sessions from David Hankins, executive director for Louisiana Baptists, Leroy Fountain, church health strategist for New Orleans Baptist Association, Barry Calhoun, mobilization director for the Southern Baptists of Texas Convention, Jon Daniel Bennett, pastor of Belfair Baptist Church in Baton Rouge, and Fred Luter, pastor of Franklin Avenue Baptist Church in New Orleans.
Their spouses also had the option of attending a special breakout session led by Carolyn Fountain, the wife of Leroy Fountain.
“I have never had someone present mission testimonies of mission trips in the way Dr. Mathews did,” said Wayne Sheppard, coordinator of partnership missions for Louisiana Baptists. “I felt as if I was there as he literally took us to the site. We could almost smell the smells and feel the atmosphere of the moment.
“I am very thankful for Louisiana Baptists church planting director James Jenkins, Leroy Fountain and Dr. Fred Luter,” he said. “Their leadership and involvement made this event a huge success. Every response by those in attendance was that we want to expand this training over the next year, and we want to make this an annual conference.”
Cedric Murphy, Body of Christ Church in Baker, said he learned that there are partnerships available for small budget and small membership African American churches that will connect them and assist them in reaching foreign missions.
“I learned that God’s mandate for us to share the gospel worldwide is just as urgent as it is to minister locally and in our communities,” he said. “We were taught that God’s presence and power is manifested greater when we step out of our comfort zones and onto the mission fields.”
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This article appeared in the Baptist Message (baptistmessage.com), newsjournal of the Louisiana Baptist Convention.
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Ga. collegians serve
Phoenix church plant
By Joe Westbury
PHOENIX (The Christian Index) — When Georgia Baptist “Send Me Now” summer missionaries descended on this western city for a week of missions outreach, they may not have known they were part of a groundbreaking ministry.
But by the time they returned to Georgia, they had made a difference for eternity in a growing network of inner city churches.
Tony Valenti, lead pastor at Bridge Phoenix, is grateful the collegians came to town as part of Crossover leading up to the Southern Baptist Convention’s annual meeting. He just wishes he had more volunteers like them to extend the ministry of his and other staff members.
For one hot week – with temperatures topping out at 107 degrees – the summer missionaries worked at Bridge Mesa, one of the churches in the growing Bridge network of congregations in economically challenged parts of Greater Phoenix. They pulled up carpet that was older than themselves and generally helped bring the old building up to date.
Valenti and his team are pioneering an innovative way of redeeming the city on a virtually nonexistent budget. It consists of identifying dying or closed churches and relaunching them as compassion ministries that grow into healthy congregations.
He is part of a younger generation taking root in the denomination that believes hurting people are hindered in listening to a gospel presentation if they are struggling to survive. It is by investing in their lives – helping them to find job skills, employment, adequate food and housing – that believers earn the right to be trusted with sharing spiritual matters.
Freed up
The West Coast native has been a Southern Baptist since he was 17 but never lived in the South. He sees that as an asset because he does not have the Southern mindset toward church planting that would be a barrier in the West. That frees up him and others to be far more creative, he believes.
Valenti moved from California to Arizona in his mid-teens and felt a calling to the ministry but had not decided just what form that would take. He was interning at a church in Lake Havasau when he met the founding pastor of Bridge Mesa. That minister, Aaron Norwood, encouraged him to transfer to Arizona State University in Phoenix and join the staff as youth pastor. Valenti, 19 at the time, was up for the challenge.
“The Bridge was the young, hip, cutting-edge church at the time meeting in night clubs and bars because we couldn’t afford anything else. Many of the youth were from gangs and lived in extreme poverty. It was kind of scary and I had no idea what I was doing but that is where I received my strong calling to inner city ministry,” he recounts.
Eventually Norwood retired and shifted his focus to overseeing the on-site food bank. Valenti stepped into the pastoral role, learning as he went, and today serves as a church planter through the North American Mission Board. That included refining the vision of locating a permanent meeting place from which to grow the congregation by meeting the needs of the community.
“Buildings that are in terrible condition really excite us”
That living-on-a-non-existent-budget was deep in the DNA of the Bridge concept. And when you don’t have money, you look for the cheapest building possible. Like, for free.
That is how the congregation located its current building south of downtown in a former Southern Baptist church. It is using that formula to launch other churches across the Valley, beginning with its first plant in Mesa where the Georgians were serving.
“Southern Baptists and others had a strong church planting emphasis in the West in the 1960s and ’70s with many of those planters coming from Oklahoma and the South. The churches did well for a time but the culture changed and the churches plateaued and began to die. Many closed their doors and remain empty today,” he noted.
“We want to find the oldest, messiest, most neglected buildings in the worst communities and place a church there. Buildings that are in terrible condition really excite us,” he says with a laugh.
Bridge Phoenix currently is eyeing one of several such churches that might become available.
“We don’t want to ‘take over’ old churches that are still existing. If the church has closed we will launch a new ministry from that location. If it is struggling, we want to work with the congregation to help them have a vibrant community of faith. Church revitalization is part of what we do,” he explains.
“Our heart is to plant churches in the inner city by taking over failing or failed churches.’
Building Bridges
That vision currently takes form in three congregations in two locations.
— Bridge Phoenix meets in a former church building and serves as the mother congregation for the network. Valenti serves the church with his wife, Andrea. It is also the location from which its community resource center was launched and has now been expanded to its new Mesa location. The centers serve as the heart for each of its church plants, seeking to first meet community needs and then build a congregation around those needing spiritual help beyond their physical and social needs. The church serves as the launch site for a comprehensive community resource center with a food bank, clothing, and related ministries known as the Rio Vista Center.
— Puente, “the bridge” in Spanish, is an Hispanic congregation housed out of the Bridge Phoenix building.
— Bridge Mesa, following the Bridge Phoenix model, meets in a former church given to Bridge Phoenix by Valley Rim Baptist Association. New leadership, under the direction of Pastor Tim Lesher, expanded the former congregation’s community ministry by launching the Casa de Amor ministry. It provides food, clothing, and job skills training as well as a pregnancy resource center.
Bridge Mesa is the location where the Georgia Baptist summer missionaries served. Lesher, a NAMB church planter, notes that 96 percent of elementary students in the neighborhood school are living in poverty. The neighborhood consists largely of working poor, multi-generational families. The small church, known as MacDonald Road Baptist Church, was a strong Southern Baptist congregation in the 1960s but had declined as the neighborhood underwent transition. Lesher serves the congregation along with his wife, April.
Rio Vista Center, based out of the Bridge Phoenix location, is the mother community resource center for the church plants. It offers emergency food boxes, a farmer’s market, clothing, job center, SNAP services (formerly known as food stamps for qualified individuals), New Life Pregnancy Center, and a community garden.
The Center is a partnership with the Arizona Baptist Children’s Services and Family Ministries. Its website says it is “7 ministries with 1 mission: to provide hope and care to hurting children and families through Christ-centered ministries.”
No time for petty politics
The philosophy for all the ministries is quite simple — be the incarnation of Christ in hurting places, meet needs first as Christ provided the example, and then share the Good News.
“Our goal is to reach the inner city and live out that calling to the best of our ability,” Valenti explains.
He notes that problems that plague other churches are virtually nonexistent because their need to survive are greater than the luxury of church politics.
“When people in your church have real needs, they don’t have time for petty politics which can sideline a church’s existence. Because we are dealing daily with hunger, poverty and neighborhood crime — the real focus in life — we are forced to avoid other less important issues,” he adds.
He states that the most important mantra they teach is that theirs is not a mission to poverty or poor people but to the community.
“We are not there to ‘save’ people — Christ does the ‘saving’ — we are just there to be a church in a high-poverty part of town.”
The Bridge leadership is focused on building up new leaders from the ranks they serve and using them to strengthen existing congregations and launch new ones, as well.
“We are dedicated to training, mentoring, and giving people all the experience they need to be a part of this exciting movement. We do not want to send anyone out until they are fully prepared for the hardships they will encounter,” he notes.
Redefining success and obedience
Lesher, taking an afternoon break with the Georgians, shares the concept. He reflects on the progress of the church relaunch, noting that when he and April arrived in August 2015 they were averaging serving 25 families a month.
Shortly before the Georgians arrived in June they served 350 … all who had a chance to hear the gospel.
Building a network of large churches is not part of the plan, he stresses. If it happens God will get the glory, but the focus is more on meeting immediate needs and launching other community ministries that can grow into healthy congregations. Results, not congregational size, is what’s important.
“We know that we are not going to solve the issues of poverty through community resource programs — only a relationship with Christ can do that,” he explains.
“Our Bridge name is not just a reference to the relationship between God and man but between all the societal and political areas which fragment society and the lives of families and individuals. We go into some of the city’s roughest neighborhoods to redeem them and turn them around for the Kingdom, address all issues.
“It’s not easy, but God never told us it would be. Planting churches in the inner city is always difficult. If you can look past the struggles and see the victories … people’s lives changed both here and in eternity … it is worth all the blood, sweat, and tears you have shed on the battlefield,” Lesher says.
“It’s definitely not for the weak-hearted.”
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This article appeared in The Christian Index (christianindex.org), newsjournal of the Georgia Baptist Convention. Joe Westbury is managing editor of The Christian Index.
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Texas So. Baptists partner
to revitalize N.D. church
By Bonnie Pritchett
WILLISTON, N.D. (Southern Baptist TEXAN) — In an unprecedented move, the Southern Baptists of Texas Convention is partnering with the Dakotas Baptist Convention (DBC) to assist with revitalization efforts in one of its churches. The venture is a covenant agreement assisting the DBC to bring new life to Cornerstone First Baptist Church in Williston, N.D., through a revitalization method developed by the SBTC.
An oil and population boom to northwest North Dakota beginning in the mid-2000s more than doubled the population of Williston, the epicenter of the Bakken oil patch fracking production, to almost 30,000. The boom also created a lot blue-collar workers with six-figure jobs.
Flush with cash and a pastor with big ideas, Cornerstone First Baptist Church relocated the church and built a $4 million facility. But the influx of people and money to the community and the church proved too much too fast. And the change became unwieldy.
With 98 percent of the congregation employed and “making good money,” DBC Executive Director Garvon Golden said the members paid down the debt on their new building to $1.2 million. But the underground fissures that brought financial wealth subsequently fractured the church when the price of oil and paychecks dropped precipitously in 2013. Cornerstone FBC membership plunged from 250 to 75, and even the pastor left.
An interim pastor served for about a year and, in 2016, Golden began making the five-hour, one-way trip from his home in Rapid City, S.D., each weekend to fill the pulpit. The drive gave him time to think and pray. The remaining congregation was committed to holding the church together, but Golden knew they would need help.
Throughout North and South Dakotas there are 87 SBC churches. The far-flung congregations average 30-35 members, with six churches having membership over 100 and the largest topping 200. The larger churches are “young and developing,” Golden said. But all combined, the convention did not have the resources to assist Cornerstone FBC.
Recalling a 2009-11 partnership between DBC and SBTC, Golden sent an email to Texas and two other SBC state conventions in the South asking for help.
Kenneth Priest, SBTC director of convention strategies, remembered the request.
“They could pay the bills, but they couldn’t pay a pastor,” said Priest.
Golden said SBTC Executive Director Jim Richards responded immediately asking the executive board to approve a revitalization covenant with a church outside the state. It had not been done before, but the prior working relationship between the two conventions and the realization that North Dakota could lose one of its strongest churches prompted SBTC leadership to readily agree, Priest said.
When Golden informed the congregation of the offer, he said they were “blown away.”
“Why would folks in Texas help?” he recalled them asking. “They were so encouraged to know they were not alone.”
That reassurance sparked a revitalization movement before officially partnering with the SBTC, and church members began filling the pulpit in October to relieve Golden of the task.
As part of the agreement, the church as well as any prospective pastor, had to sign on to the covenant. T.J. Green heartily agreed, saying he relished the idea of working with Cornerstone FBC, not in spite of but because of its circumstances.
In July Green accepted the call to pastor Cornerstone and moved his family—wife, Kristy, and their three sons Caedmon, 7, Tyler, 6, and Maverick, 10 months—from northern Florida to Williston, which is located just 70 miles south of the Canadian border. When asked by the TEXAN if he had purchased long underwear, Green laughed saying he had already researched clothes layering in preparation for the sub-zero degree winter.
Green, like the congregation, is grateful for the Texas partnership and sees it as more than a one-off venture. The SBTC’s covenant partnership model used in the DBC-Cornerstone FBC relationship “is the route people need to take,” he said.
That kind of covenant revitalization, he said, is an untapped resource. Referring to his own congregation at Cornerstone FBC, Green said, “What about these churches? We can save them.”
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This article appeared in the Southern Baptist TEXAN (texanonline.net), newsjournal of the Southern Baptists of Texas Convention. Bonnie Pritchett is a correspondent for the TEXAN.
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EDITOR’S NOTE: From the States, published each Tuesday by Baptist Press, relays news and feature stories from state Baptist papers and other publications on initiatives by Baptist churches, associations and state conventions in evangelism, church planting and Great Commission outreach, including partnership missions. Reports about churches, associations and state conventions responding to the International Mission Board’s call to embrace the world’s unengaged, unreached people groups also are included in From the States, along with reports about church, associational and state convention initiatives in conjunction with the North American Mission Board’s call to Southern Baptist churches to broaden their efforts in starting new churches and satellite campuses. Except for minor style, formatting and grammatical changes, the items appear in Baptist Press as originally published.
