Published Tuesday, December 29, 2009

Baptists planning new evangelistic outreach

By Winston Skinner

The Newnan Times-Herald

Baptist churches in Coweta County -- some of which have been around since the 1820s -- will be using 21st century technology in the coming year to connect potential worshippers with their congregations.

Dr. Wayne Jenkins, associational missionary for Western Baptist Association, told pastors recently about findithere.com -- a comprehensive outreach program that builds on an Internet Web site with visits, tracts, billboards and other efforts to bring people to church -- and to Christ.

Jenkins compared the effort to Coca-Cola's relentless advertising of its product. "Why do you think Coca-Cola wants their advertising on everything out there? Familiarity breeds familiarity," he said.

A growing number of churches of all denominations have Internet Web sites now. The Web sites share information about service times and beliefs. They sometimes offer "alert" messages when there is a schedule change or a need in the church family.

Many churches and pastors also are using electronic methods -- particularly e-mail -- to remind parishioners of upcoming events or to let them know a church member has died or is ill.

The new initiative from the Southern Baptist Convention's North American Mission Board -- findithere.com -- will allow someone to find a church near their home. The project is part of a broader program, GPS -- God's Plan for Sharing -- that encourages churches to use several methods to reach unchurched families. GPS has a pilot program giving churches resources to contact people with a goal of getting those individuals to church on Easter Sunday.

The pilot involves five associations, which are regional organizations of Southern Baptist churches, including two in Georgia in the Stone Mountain and Dublin areas.

A similar program is being offered through the Georgia Baptist Convention. The Acts 1:8 project offers suggestions and support materials for churches to undertake a variety of outreach ministries that start in their own communities and spread throughout the world.

The GBC initiative takes its theme from words of Jesus in Acts 1:8 -- "But ye shall receive power, after that the Holy Ghost is come upon you: and ye shall be witnesses unto me both in Jerusalem, and in all Judaea, and in Samaria, and unto the uttermost part of the earth."

GBC also is sponsoring Across Georgia 2010, which is a plan for outreach and evangelistic services throughout the state. In order to have evangelists available for services, different areas of the state are participating in Across Georgia 2010 in four month-long time frames starting in February and ending in July.

At findithere.com, a visitor can punch in his address and find the Southern Baptist church closest to his home. The site can also be searched by zip code. Some information the Internet visitor may want to know can be found on the site -- whether the church is rural or urban, how many members it has, and contact information for the pastor. Driving directions from home to church can be obtained.

"People are going to be able to find your church," Jenkins observed. In some cases, the site also lists a Web site for the church, which may give a potential worshipper more of the flavor of the congregation, its worship style and ministry focus.

Information and video messages in Spanish and English are part of the findithere site. Visitors also can download a 30-page booklet that shares the gospel message.

About 30 area pastors got information about findithere.com and related programs at a recent meeting at Western Baptist Association's offices on Jefferson Place. The association is a group of about 55 churches affiliated with the Southern Baptist Convention in Coweta and adjoining counties.

"There is no reason why we can't take this area for Jesus Christ. We've just got to work at it," Jenkins told the pastors.

Jenkins shared a slide presentation with the pastors -- including one that showed circles with a three-mile radius around each church. While many of the circles intersected, there were some gaps. One was in the rural stretch between Moreland and Turin, and others were in the more sparsely populated counties of Heard and Meriwether.

The association is providing 50,000 door hangers that volunteers from churches can hang on doors. A goal is for each church to hang a packet on each door in the three-mile radius.

To the prepared materials, churches should add their own informational piece. "The more professional it looks, the better," Jenkins said. "You're going to have to do it right."

The informational sheet and any tracts should also include contact information -- including a phone number and the church Web site address, Jenkins said. He also recommended putting a bag of M&Ms or other candy in the bag.

He suggested the bags not be overloaded. "The less it has in it, the more it's going to be read. The goal is to attempt to connect everyone with the gospel," the associational missionary noted.

Ken Norton, pastor of Providence Baptist Church, said Providence mounted a similar effort recently -- placing door hangers on 300 doors in the Providence Church Road area. The next Sunday, "we had six new families in our church," he said.

Jenkins said he is not worried about overlap with the multi-pronged evangelistic effort. "Imagine if a family gets visited four or five different times by different churches, but they have the same tracts," he said. He suggested the family would see that "these churches are working together."

For one household to be visited by multiple churches would be "a great problem," Jenkins said. "Wouldn't that be wonderful?"

Most studies show multiples contacts are needed before a person will visit a church or accept the message of the Christian gospel. Contacts from members of several churches can help increase the comfort people feel with Christians and church.

The packets left on doorknobs, the findithere Web site, planned billboards and other methods will be used to make findithere something people are seeing and talking about. Jenkins suggested a rolling billboard -- a large sign on a trailer that could be pulled through communities throughout the area -- might be a possibility.

People working with the outreach effort hope having the findithere project everywhere will help make the initiative a fruitful one. "Lost people -- their fear level goes down," Jenkins stated.

Although the project uses up-to-the-minute technology, nothing replaces personal contact. He urged pastors to have their congregations prayer walk in their communities. "You need to. It gets people out of the building," he said.

"Get them out there. Let them see the lost people," Jenkins said.

As church members walk past houses, they are to stop and pray for the residents. Sometimes people will be in the yard, and opportunities for conversation present themselves. "Let the people know you're praying for them," Jenkins urged.

Jenkins urged pastors to incorporate findithere and related efforts in ways that work with their churches and the church's schedule. Some focused evangelistic service at each church is part of the package.

"This is not geared for church people," Jenkins said. "This is geared for lost people."

He also suggested some larger churches might volunteer to help smaller ones with hanging door hangers or some other aspect of the project. Bill Brannon, a pastor for decades who lives in Senoia, said that kind of collaboration can provide "a good spiritual uplift -- churches helping churches."

Baptists are ubiquitous in the South. "We're on every corner," Jenkins observed.

Area residents know there are Baptists and probably know where some Baptist churches are located. The findithere project aims to build on that familiarity and connect individuals to churches.

"We've been here since 1828," Jenkins said of Western Association. "The Indians left, and the Baptists came in."