SAN ANTONIO?Relational evangelism is center stage at Fellowship Community Church, a church plant located on the south side of San Antonio, where the population is 90 percent Hispanic. Founded in 2005, Fellowship Community Church was planted by Josh Tapia to reach San Antonio’s growing English-speaking Hispanic population. Tapia began the church after noticing that many of its residents
were traveling to the city’s north side for Sunday worship services.

“Our target was to get them into Sunday School and to reach the lost,” Tapia said. Today, the church has a strong core of 65 people and holds worship services in a well-known community center.

Depending on the weather, new believers are baptized in the Frio River at Garner State Park or in a large trough in the gym of the community center.

The advantage of operating out of a community center has been two-fold. First, costs are kept to a minimum. Second, the church is planted in the midst of the people. Every Tuesday evening, church members distribute bottled water in the nearby parks.

“We get there at 7 or 8 and we’ll pass out 100 bottles of water in 45 minutes,” Tapia said.
The group hands out cards with the church’s information on it to hundreds of people who gather to play basketball, take their children to the playground, and walk the grounds.

“This is where most churches miss it,” Tapia said. “We are connecting with them outside of the building. A lot of churches set up a great building, but we are engaging them where they are. And the fruit of that will be well worth it.”

But after spending time in the parks and the surrounding neighborhoods, Tapia said he began to notice Fellowship was failing to reach out to the city’s newest demographic.

“With urbanization there is one need we cannot ignore?the Spanish-speaking immigrants who are flooding the south side,” he said. “As much as I’ve tried to stay focused on English-speaking
Hispanics, I cannot ignore any longer the need to reach these Spanish-speakers.”

After realizing that the church’s numerous outreach efforts in the parks were doing little to entice Spanish-speakers to worship services, the church began to pray about offering a Sunday morning service in Spanish. Tapia said the new service will launch at the end of September.

“Our prayer is that God will provide what we will need to do it,” he said, “We want to reach people for the King. We are in a perfect situation to begin.”

Although many on the church staff are bilingual, Tapia knows that language can be a powerful barrier to ministry. “Language is key,” he said, explaining that people like to spend time with people who are similar to them.

“Normally when you go and find a Spanish-speaking family, you’ll also find a bunch of Spanish-speaking families surrounding them. They have a sense of community which is very interesting, because the church is about being a community. If we can become part of their community and introduce Christ, that would be a great thing.”

For churches looking to minister cross-culturally but do not possess language skills, Tapia suggested ministering to children first. “The children of immigrants are going to school and picking up English pretty quickly,” he said. “If you get the kids, you’ll get the parents.”

Tapia also suggested that churches near inner cities seek out parks or apartment complexes with pools for servant evangelism activities.

“You can go every week and take sno-cones for the kids, and as you are there you build relationships. Language is not necessary for that. Soon, the kid will become the mediator between his parent and the servant evangelist.”

Asian Mission
Christian Fellowship
Beyond Spanish-speakers, San Antonio’s Asian population is also on the rise. Accounting for only 2 percent of the current population, the figures have doubled in the past 10 years, according to 2005 U.S. Census information. In an effort to engage San Antonio’s growing Laotian and Thai populations, Asian Mission Christian Fellowship was planted on the city’s east side in 2003 by Sisavath Ketsatha.

Ketsatha was a member of Alamo City Christian Fellowship when God burdened his heart for his fellow Laotian and Thai residents in San Antonio, who were separated from Texas churches by language and culture.

“My church is a mixed population,” Ketsatha explained. “We have Lao, Thai, Cambodian, Philippine, and some others.” The church averages 40 to 50 members, and Sunday services are held in two languages.

Desiring to share the gospel in his people’s heart language, Ketsatha preaches in two languages. “I preach five minutes in Lao and five minutes in Thai,” he said, adding that he tries to finish the sermon in 40 minutes even though he is alternating between two languages.

The church also offers new member classes in Thai and English and other classes held in Lao. Making sure that all members have their own Bibles, Kethsatha hopes to emphasize a life of witnessing and evangelism to new community members. Most of the Asian Mission members come from transfer growth, immigrating to the U.S. by way of California. But when they finally arrive in Texas, Ketsatha is ready with open arms.

“If I know a family [has moved here], I go visit them,” he said, getting excited at the prospect. “I love that! I tell them about my church.”

In sharing with Asian people groups, Ketsatha often contends with Buddhism, a task he doesn’t view as very difficult with the strength of the gospel on his side. “I use the Bible to make disciples,” he said, choosing to keep his methods uncomplicated. “I just share the gospel.”

Jim O’Neal, associate pastor at Alamo City Christian Fellowship, encouraged Ketsatha when he first committed to plant the Asian Mission. “A church should look and smell and taste like where it’s planted,” he said. “Jesus is the only constant.”

O’Neal has watched Ketsatha grow from a mission-minded church member to a passionate church planter.

“Those people are his ethnos, and he is an example of just being faithful to where you’re called,” O’Neal said.

In the decades to come, successfully fulfilling the Great Commission in Texas will prove difficult if churches do not reach out to some of the state’s new people groups.

“We are tied to the homogeneity principle of church growth,” Bluebonnet Association’s J.K. Minton said. “We are focused on reaching our own kind. Our existing churches generally have neither the priority nor the resources to significantly address the cross-cultural challenges presented by urbanization.”

Minton noted a second challenge of urbanization?attitudes in the church regarding immigration.
“We often exhibit a rather condescending attitude toward other ethnicities, particularly those who are non-professionals,” he said. “These attitudes are obvious and demonstrate that ‘these people’ are not welcome in our congregation.”

Additionally, ethnic groups place greater value on community over an individualistic lifestyle, Minton said.

“They tend to have a much greater regard for what other members of their community [or] family think or do,” Minton said. “They are very hesitant to change their family religion or heritage. Therefore, our evangelistic efforts to target the individual, rather than the group, have been fairly ineffective.”

To address some of these social and cultural obstacles, the Bluebonnet Association seeks to empower church planters of different ethnicities “who are sensitive and equipped to reaching their own kind.”

“The focus and intention of strategic church plants is to develop multicultural and multi-ethnic members,” Minton said, noting that the association has two additional elements to help churches deal with urbanization.

“Three things are true about our cities. They are growing at an amazing rate; they are fragmenting as fast as they are growing; and they will touch every human being living today in increasingly profound ways,” wrote Randy White, urban projects director for InterVarsity Christian Fellowship, in his book “Journey to the Center of the City.”

Despite the inescapable grasp of urbanization, White said few churches are addressing the needs of urban centers. With cities now boasting dozens of ethnic groups, the cultural and economic divide between new suburban communities and urban communities are rife with myths and misconceptions. In short, urban ministry makes many believers uncomfortable.

Burdened with the spiritual and physical results of urban growth, White and his family moved from a stable California suburb to one of the poorest neighborhoods in the heart of Fresno, Calif. Chronicling their transition to urban life, “Journey to the Center of the City” shares the story of the White family as they sought to make a difference for Christ in their own city.

In reviewing his own urban ministry, White purposed his book to serve as “a testimony to God’s love and provision for those who venture out of their comfort zones to practice a lifestyle of love in neighborhoods of need.”

Myth 1: The city is ugly
Shortly after moving his family to a low-income, neglected community and finding himself far removed from his white, middle-class perspective, White said he was forced to face several myths of inner-city ministry. To reach new demographics with the gospel, believers must face the unpleasant realities of the city and move past them, he said.

“The most obvious myth to emerge from [my] experience was my unspoken assumption that this part of town was incapable of beauty. After all, didn’t the bars on windows, cyclone fences, deteriorating paint, lack of landscaping, and graffiti prove that the residents there didn’t care about taking care of things? The place was so ugly,” White said.

But it wasn’t until White began to spend time with his new neighbors that his perspective changed.

“The beauty that exists in the core of the city began to dawn like a hazy sun in my eyes. It was the life of those neighbors that silently taught me to examine with different eyes what I assumed,” he said.
“They have the same appreciation for life and beauty, the same human aspirations, fears and desires for their family that we all know to be universal.”

“As commuters race to get out this neighborhood, they will miss the visual cues that exist just out of view, testifying to the beauty that is resident here ? Because most of those cues are inside the home. To see them one would have to stop and spend time there.”

Because believers are “well tutored by culture” to associate external realities with beauty, White said the first step in urban ministry is to “to retrain our eyes not only to expect beauty in unlikely places ? That means I need to learn the discipline of anchoring my sense of visual appreciation in people rather than in aesthetics alone.”

Myth 2: God dwells in the mountains
There is a second myth that prevents believers from ministering to urban dwellers: dirty, dangerous cities are the last place you’d go to find the presence of God. For example, White noted that most devotional guides have wilderness images on their covers?like a waterfall or mountain?sending the message that “it’s the hills, not the streets, that are alive with the sound of music.”

Conceding there is biblical precedent for going to the wilderness to seek God, White added that the journey of believers to the “calm of cabin retreats” has turned into an evacuation from urban centers.
As a result, the church is missing out on valuable ministry opportunities in their own cities.

“Some have fled not in search of God, but out of fear over what they see happening in the city.
Unfortunately, all too often the church has joined the mass exodus, removing the very salt and light that is needed.”

Quoting Psalm 121:1-2, White noted it is not the countryside that holds the power to calm fears. “It is the presence of God we are after, not merely escape from what we fear. Psalms, so often the book of the Bible that best helps us process our fears, sets a consistently urban context for God’s work,” with 49 of the 150 psalms having an urban focus. “Most deal with Jerusalem, but some deal with other cities. Most are psalms that express God’s creative love for the city.”

White sees the city as central to God’s design for redemption. “Let’s keep going to the mountain. We’ll go there to commune with God, to be renewed and inspired. But let’s go to the city too. There we will observe God at work, carrying out his transforming agenda.”

Love your city
The Great Commission begins with learning to love the city, wrote White, offering two ideas for ministering to urbanities. First, make connections with people. Defining “connections” as “simple chances for paths to cross,” White said even things like buying ice cream at the same time translates into a shared experience. “Then the connections can develop into greater opportunities for involvement with one another.”

The initiative of the Holy Spirit is central to interacting with people, he added.

“For me, the key has been to pray that God will orchestrate and direct this kind of neighbor-love,” White said. “Our journey to the center of our city is ? merely an attempt to cross paths with those who are poor and those who care about the poor, allowing our lives to influence one another, providing new contexts where Jesus Christ can make something happen?something new and redemptive?both in their lives and in ours.”

Second, loving the city means learning to partner with the poor. But, White added, that partnership must be conducted in a manner “that recognizes and maintains their dignity.” White suggests gathering a coalition of people from the neighborhood and from other Christian agencies to paint houses, install alley lights, read to children, and pick up trash. Working side-by-side with people from the neighborhood opens doors to share the gospel, he said.

For more specific ideas on how believers and churches can learn to love their cities, White included a list of 21 practical tips on beginning an inner-city ministry. He offers ideas such as taking a drive through a poor section of town.

“See if you can keep track of a few things and compare them to your neighborhood (for example, the number of boarded up houses, ratio of check-cashing stores to banks, and note the condition of the streets, amount of graffiti, etc).

Other ideas on White’s list include:
?Asking an inner-city church to sponsor an urban tour for some of your church members to learn about the needs of that part of the city.

?Attend an inner-city church that is ethnically different from your own church. Stay after the service to meet people and eat lunch together.

?Sponsor a joint youth group service project like Habitat for Humanity to connect a suburban and inner-city church.

?Prayerwalk through a neglected neighborhood with residents of the area every week for one month.
For more urban ministry ideas or to read excerpts from “Journey to the Center of the City” (ISBN: 0-8308-1129-X), visit ivpress.com.

First to come were the millions of families seeking affordable housing outside major cities. Next were the commercial enterprises for all of the new residents. Then came industry as jobs and companies were relocated closer to the people. All three waves of growth combined over the past 50 years to concentrate the greatest portion of the American populace in one area?suburbia.

More people now live in suburbs than inside the loop of central cities and small towns combined. No longer regarded as simply sub-urban?suburbs have become the residence of choice for most people with the youngest generation of adults mostly comprised of those with no experience in small-town America.

While suburbs were once seen as developments situated 20 miles from an urban center and 20 miles away from rural farmland, they are now growing together in some places.

In every metropolitan area of Texas, residents traveling beyond the major cities can go from one suburb to the next, crossing many cities in a row before finding any open spaces.

Such dramatic change to the Texas landscape affects how local churches define their territory for local ministry.

In his book “The Suburban Christian,” Albert Y. Hsu asks, “How might the Christian faith contextualize itself in such a way as to be compelling to suburbanites without getting sucked into the trappings and temptations of suburban living?” In the process, he provides practical suggestions that could transform these sprawling communities into the more friendly neighborhoods once associated with areas and smaller towns.

“Instead of a place of community, suburbia is often anonymous and isolated,” Hsu writes. “And yet those who moved to the suburbs use phrases like ‘a good place to raise kids’ or ‘where people settle down and start a family’ to describe their anticipation of a good life. In other words, suburbia is the context and the setting for the fulfillment of people’s hopes and dreams,” he concludes.

Despite such goals, certain characteristics of suburbia make that more difficult. Many of these residents commute a half hour or more a day to their jobs, often heading out at dawn to avoid the traffic and sometimes returning after the supper hour. That leaves little time for the family, civic or church activities, Hsu observes.

He cites one study that revealed each additional 10 minutes in daily commuting time cuts involvement in community affairs by 10 percent.

Changes in the design of housing, concern for safety, and even the advent of television and air conditioning moved much of the population indoors, reducing opportunities for interaction with neighbors. The tendency to move to a new house that matches escalating needs or desires, Hsu insists, works against growing roots that build relationships.

Even the decision of selecting a church can turn into a contest, scouting all the various options even if it requires another commute to satisfy particular preferences in size, style and purpose.

“We don’t work in our local community. We don’t make friends in our neighborhood. We commute elsewhere to shop, to study, to worship,” Hsu notes.

That doesn’t have to be the case, he argues, offering steps that can return suburban neighborhoods to a parish mindset.

“Think of what happens to us when we live, work and worship in different communities. If we live in suburb A but work half an hour away in suburb B and commute twenty minutes in the opposite direction to a church in suburb C, we find our sense of identity fragmented. We are dis-integrated, and our loyalties and connections are diffused into three different geographic areas,” he writes, describing the absence of overlap between disparate worlds.

By attempting to live, work and worship in the same community, a greater sense of investment and rootedness occurs, increasing the likelihood that neighbors, co-workers and fellow church members interact in more than one setting. He borrows an idea from another author who suggested scoping out a one-mile radius around the home, then seeking to do as much within this area as possible.

As a resident of suburban Chicago working at InterVarsity Press, Hsu accurately observes that a one-mile radius is smaller than many subdivisions in many metropolitan areas, but accepted the challenge by mapping an area of about five miles across that includes his workplace, the library, the post office, the gas station, the grocery store, a favorite used bookstore?all of it making up his “parish.”

By intentionally spending most of his time in that zone, Hsu finds himself connecting with people he sees on repeated visits to nearby stores and services. Making a conscious effort to walk when it is feasible yields other benefits.

“We need to remind ourselves that its okay that walking takes longer than driving. It takes me far longer to walk to the park with my son than to drive there and back, but along the way he notices things that we don’t see when we speed by at forty-five miles per hour,” he writes.

“It is much harder for potential good Samaritans to help people in need when zipping past them on the freeway than it is to stop by when you are on a neighborhood walk or jog.”

The need for non-threatening gathering spots outside of work and home led to development of the “third place” concept that made establishments like Starbucks so successful. Suburbanites seek to replace the routine interaction that once occurred in barbershops and beauty parlors, hardware stores and grocery marts.

Hsu believes those relationships can still occur when individuals alter their own traffic patterns, suppressing “our impulses to ignore those around us and instead try to live in awareness and attentiveness to those we encounter, whether at a park or playground or in a restaurant or grocery store.”

CHRISTIAN HOSPITALITY
Hsu adds that the chief antidote to suburban anonymity and isolationism may be the Christian practice of hospitality. Thirty years ago Americans had friends over to their homes 15 times a year while the average today is just once every month and a half.

Whether in hosting international students for a semester or setting a goal of having guests over at least once a month, Hsu offers a variety of ways to demonstrate the biblical call to “love your neighbor.”
Even returning to the simple habit of borrowing a cup of flour from a neighbor instead of making a mad dash to the grocery store can encourage those friendships.

“Ultimately, we must come to view our suburbs not merely as private dwelling places but as communities where we know and are known by networks of neighbors and friends,”

Hsu writes. “No one is an island; extroverts and introverts alike need community. Even in suburbia.”

Draw a circle around every place in Texas with a zip code that begins with 797 and you find a good contrast in urban and rural life.

Stretched along Interstate 20 between Coahoma on the east side and the intersection with I-10 on the west, the urban areas of Midland and Odessa offer skyscrapers rising out of the vast Permian Basin region, each city with populations of near 100,000.

At a fourth that size, Big Spring weighs in at more than 25,000 residents, making it a big city by Texas standards, while surrounding towns like Andrews, Monahans, Pecos, and Fort Stockton each have fewer than 10,000. Spaced many miles apart are even smaller towns like Fort Davis, Gail, Iraan, McCamey, and Sheffield. And yet every one of them has a church affiliated with Southern Baptists of Texas.

While it stands to reason that most of the lost people live in the heart of the huge cities–a reminder that the North American Mission Board offers when making the case for an urban strategy for evangelism, there are over a thousand towns in Texas with less than 50,000 people. About a third of those measure their population in the hundreds. None of the six largest metropolitan areas in which two-thirds of all Texans live fall within this zip code boundary.

So while Texas is growing by leaps and bounds, there’s a whole lot of Texas that remains small. It’s not hard to find committed pastors serving in those towns and cities that begin with a 797 zip code. Many of them make a strong case for the advantages of long-tenured ministry to the same flock of people, even when the prospects of an area’s growth are less hopeful.

When Bill Melton received a call from Calvary Baptist in Andrews, he got out a map and found the location just 40 miles inside the Texas border near New Mexico. “I saw where it was and didn’t consider it any more,” he told the TEXAN. Eight months later the discipleship pastor called again.
“The more I talked with him, the more it seemed to be a real fit methodologically.”

The population of Andrews is one small town likely to see some growth as a result of the recent upsurge in oil production. Still, it was quite a change from Northwest Arkansas where Melton pastored a planned community aptly named Holiday Island. “The kids were entering junior high and I figured it was time to stay or go.” He’s glad he gave it a shot. Through small group meetings every other week,
Melton said, “Relationships continue to build greater connectedness beyond Sunday morning service. This has been a great fit for what I thought a church should be.”

Far to the western edge of the mapped region is Pecos where Ron Garcia pastors Calvary Baptist Church in a strongly Catholic area. He finds his members are committed to studying God’s Word, but recognizes that churches in the area have plateaued with no new move-ins. “People move into a big city. People move out of a small town,” Garcia explained.

Like most smaller towns, the senior age group provides the strength of the church, though Garcia has seen some success in reaching young couples where future growth lies. As a bivocational minister, the time he can give to ministry is limited, but he’s convinced God called him to serve Pecos.

“We have rebuilt, refurnished and remodeled all of the church–debt free,” Garcia added, seeing that as a testimony that his church will not “surrender to the world,” but continue to offer a witness in this West Texas town.

There are plenty of SBTC churches are in the Midland-Odessa area where a quarter of a million people live. The economy is healthy and pastors like Ivy Shelton at Sherwood Baptist are seeing new families move in and participate in the life of the church. For the past seven years, Sherwood has utilized the FAITH evangelism strategy to offer the gospel message to the neighborhoods surrounding the church.

And yet the lack of assimilation and discipleship of new members has been frustrating to Shelton and other area pastors. This fall Sherwood is launching a year-long new member’s class, hoping to overcome any discouragement felt by the committed evangelistic teams.

Compared to the church he pastored in a smaller nearby town, Shelton sees opportunities in an urban setting that rural churches usually doesn’t attempt, such as ministering to prisoners and halfway house residents, and addiction-related ministries. “However, when I was in a rural setting, I did feel like more of life centered around church life and that the church body was a bit more cohesive.”

In leading the church through various changes, Shelton said they have emphasized agreeing to disagree without ruining the unity of the church body. “When a decision needs to be made and there is disagreement there are times we will table it, pray about it, and come back to it later. Usually, we will then have much more of a consensus.” And when disagreement remains, Shelton said had asked the church to remain unified as he leads decisively. “If you make enough ‘trust deposits’ with your people, they will give you a great deal of room to make ‘hard decision withdrawals’ even if they disagree with you from time to time.”

Another Odessa pastor who has served in both rural and urban settings appreciates the benefit of a strong core group of members. “We have a good overall commitment to unity of purpose based upon doctrine,” stated John Taylor, pastor of Kingston Avenue Baptist.

Compared to pastoring in a small town, Taylor finds, “People have a lot less time in the city and you aren’t given a lot of time to build relationships.” Most of the church’s additions have been by conversion and Taylor is encouraged by seeing “more of God’s activity this year.”

SBTC churches in the area seem eager to help those in more isolated settings, often sending teams out to provide specific ministries. The pastor of First Baptist Church of Ackerly said the willingness to help
each other out is typical of relationships forged by generations of West Texans.

“We have to band our little churches together,” explained Ray McMorris, adding that the association to which he relates has no director of missions. “We have to take care of our own.”

He has little patience for younger ministers who view smaller churches as a stepping stone to something larger. “It takes five years to get to know the congregation, but the average pastor stays only two or three years. What’s the point?” he asked.

“So many pastors want to minister on the I-35 corridor,” added Mike Wright of First Baptist Iraan. Serving in his first church, Wright said he identifies with the West Texas culture. He described life as more laid back than an urban area, noting the importance of building relationships and becoming oriented to the community. “My giftedness is in small church settings. I am a person committed to the long haul.”

Whether in a big city or small town, that kind of patience makes it possible for pastors to lead congregations through needed change, stated Tim Ellis, a speaker at last year’s SBTC SENT Conference in Austin.

Ellis described many small-town Texas churches as family-run going back many generations. “They believe in evangelism, missions, an inerrant Bible and are generally loyal Southern Baptists,” he said, but the pastor is often viewed as a chaplain.

Currently serving as an associational missionary in East Texas, Ellis said small town and rural churches can adjust to change if given enough time, he said. “Pastors who understand this stay and have successful ministries. Those that do not generally struggle and have short stays.”

Compared to his previous experience of ministering to youth in a Lubbock church, Bobby Floyd of College Baptist in Big Spring takes advantage of worthwhile large-scale activities that draw many youth groups together regardless of size.

“Our youth group isn’t really big enough to do its own camp by itself. The cost alone would put us way under,” he said. “It was really good for our church to get to be a part of Centrifuge in Glorieta. They had a chance to meet other youth from all over the country and see how God is working in other places.” Out of that experience, Floyd said the teenagers returned to share what God had shown them throughout the week of camp.

ACKERLY?Ray McMorris couldn’t have lived in a better place for his family to benefit from the rapid growth of Texas cities. Van Alstyne is a small Texas town on the verge of a population explosion like that experienced by the towns of Anna and Melissa to the south where the number of residents is four or five times larger than recorded in the 2000 census.

Most towns within an hour’s drive of the large metropolitan areas of Houston, Dallas, San Antonio, Austin and Fort Worth are starting to look more alike as chain stores move in and suburbia takes hold.

With two-thirds of Texans living in the state’s six largest cities, what would attract a middle-aged man to head for a town one-tenth the size of Van Alstyne with little prospect of growth? The answer is obvious to many rural church pastors who know what it means to watch an entire generation grow up under their ministries.

“I know everyone in town by name,” explained McMorris, who pastors a church in Ackerly that “runs 40 on a good Sunday,” halfway between Big Spring and Lamesa in West Texas. “You eat with them. You worship with them. You’re around them all the time,” he said.

He’s well aware that the future isn’t all that bright for tiny West Texas towns. “Young folks move away and the old folks pass on.”

Once a part of the massive Slaughter Ranch before it was sold and broken up into family tracts in 1923, the population peaked at 500 in 1948 but began declining as farming became a less stable source of income.

Now the city limits sign reflects a population that has remained flat at 245, though the town looked forward to welcoming two new residents?twin boys recently born into the pastor’s family.

“It’ll be good bringing them home,” he shared in early August after a week of commuting 90 miles north to a Lubbock hospital.

Surprisingly, the small church can support a full-time pastor.

“A man could live on it,” McMorris said, “but a man with five kids can’t.”

So he also works for an irrigation well service run by a church member. It’s a trade he already knew from his years of maintenance work for an energy contractor in North Texas.

The second job can require traveling long distances to service wells on the spread-out farms, but McMorris said he enjoys being separated from a big-city atmosphere. “You can see where you’re going out here,” he said in describing the wide-open spaces with little more than windmills and oil derricks in view.

Coming from an area on the outskirts of huge cities, McMorris worried how his kids would handle the transition. Instead, he found them embracing the small town. “They went from being one in a crowd to their own somebody.”

Now in a small school system of only 200 students they get plenty of personal attention. While the new additions to his family were a bit of a surprise, McMorris knew he could handle it if he stayed put.

“I kinda made a bargain with God,” he explained, recalling when he learned his wife would be having twins at a time when the youngest of his three kids is 10 years old. “I told him, ‘If you want us to stay here, let me stay ’til the kids graduate?that’s 18 more years.'”

That kind of commitment makes a difference in small town church where members trust each other and expect everyone to carry his own weight.

“Once somebody’s a Christian, they get after it,” he said, whether teaching Sunday School or serving on a committee. “It’s a huge advantage,” he added.

“If you want to find out how church is run, how it should run, come to a small little church. If I’m gone, they keep going. They don’t have to worry about who’s on what committee. That surprised me coming from the Dallas area. The church runs without you. You can lead ’em, but they’ll keep on going without you.”

The Ackerly pastor sees no shortage of prospects.

“We’ve got 245 of them?now it’s 247. I’ve baptized 18 so that’s 4 to 5 percent of the population. You don’t get those numbers in big areas,” he observed. “You’ve got a certain number of prospects and that’s it. You can’t look at it as closed in. Get out and minister to people that surround you and you’ll be surprised at how many people are there. You have to look for them.”

Besides, ministering in a small town has its advantages when trying to attract young people.

“Kids don’t have anything else to do in this town, so they come to church,” he stated. Plus, he said he plans to be their pastor at various stages of life.

He learned how to pastor from older, godly ministers through the years when he filled in preaching at other churches as needed, he said. The examples he looked to were men who preached the Scripture in churches that appreciated that priority.

With the move to First Baptist Church of Ackerly, McMorris has found a congregation of people who love each other and reach out to the community around them. “I haven’t had one regret.”

KESZTHELY, Hungary?The head of the Dallas-based Pasche Institute for Jewish Studies was elected coordinator of the Lausanne Consultation on Jewish Evangelism (LCJE) for North America during their eighth international conference at Lake Balaton in Keszthely, Hungary.

North American members of LCJE elected Jim Sibley, a Criswell College professor and former consultant on Jewish evangelism for Southern Baptists, to the post. Among the participants were Southern Baptist representatives serving in Russia and Israel.

The Aug. 19-24 conference provided a platform for the network of organizations and individuals to gather information, coordinate strategies, consider trends, and stimulate theological thinking and missiological research in the cause of advancing Jewish evangelism.

Sibley presented a paper on obstacles to Jewish evangelism in America and Europe, noting trends that must be recognized by those who have a vision for the salvation of the Jewish people. He warned that multiculturalism makes Jewish evangelism politically incorrect and even the Christian community rushes past the promised blessings to Israel in a hermeneutical confusion between the meaning of a text and its application.

“Too often, Christian faith is built on a kind of Gentile midrash?that is, on a manner of understanding Scripture that is superficial, devotional, and spiritualizing.”

He offered examples of how American Christians often apply promised blessings to Israel to their own lives as though that were the original meaning, reinterpreting the text to speak of “my land” in 2 Chronicles 7:14, “my life” in Jeremiah 29:11 and “my Jerusalem” in and Acts 1:8. In most pulpits, “superficial, topically-oriented sermons” have replaced more substantive, expository preaching, he said. “In such a context, motivation for Jewish evangelism is severely weakened, for the voice of Scripture has been muffled.”

Sibley focused on three areas of theological error that lead to poor missiology. In regard to bibliology, he said a stronger counter-attack is needed in light of the erosion of confidence in the use of messianic prophecy, one outgrowth of the attack on the authority of the Bible.

Regarding soteriology, inclusivism driven by religious piety and emotion more than a scripturally based doctrine of salvation, does not regard explicit faith in Jesus as necessary for salvation.

Ecclesiology?the doctrine of the church?is damaged by supersessionism or replacement theology. Sibley explained that the view that “the Church has replaced Israel in the purposes of God” introduces confusion and contradiction when Christians claim to worship the God of Israel but neglect the people
of Israel.

“To deny God’s interest in the Jewish people is to deny the God of Israel,” he said.

He noted that these obstacles are often addressed in Mishkan, a publication of the Pasche Institute of Jewish Studies with many of those resources available online at pascheinstitute.org.

With these theological errors, Sibley warned that the foundational storyline of the Bible which provides the basic impetus for missions is suppressed and Israel is inaccurately assumed to be “God’s failed Plan A.”

“At most, the Jewish people are simply one of thousands of other people groups, with absolutely no biblical, theological, or missiological uniqueness,” he said. “Supersessionism renders most Christians oblivious to the fact that the two most basic ethnic categories in Scripture are “Jew” and “Gentile” and to the fact that the two forms of missions in the New Testament are Jewish missions and Gentile missions.

“At worst, the Jewish people have had their chance and are no longer to be on the agenda of the church at all.” He said the phrase in Matthew 28:19, “panta ta ethne,” is read by some as, “all Gentiles,” instead of “all the nations,” prompting a suspicion that God himself is not interested in the Jewish people.

“This neglect of the Jewish people by mission leaders is reinforced by Western pragmatism that often reduces missions decisions to a ‘cost-per-soul’ type of calculation. In such a calculus, resistant groups, in general, and the Jewish people, in particular, do not generally fare well. It is not viewed as good stewardship of mission resources to invest in groups where the anticipated ‘return’ is not very great.”

Sibley said this entire mentality would be very foreign to the prophets of Israel or the apostles of the early church, citing Ezekiel’s obedience in spite of being told his message would not be received and Paul insisting on going “to the Jew first,” not out of expediency, but because it was necessary as indicated by Romans 1:16 and other passages making Jewish missions a priority through the centuries.
Aware that the obstacles are real, Sibley reminded his audience of the victory promised by God when offering salvation to the Jewish people. “It will not come without struggle, but we must not lose heart.”

The theme of the quadrennial conference was “Jewish Evangelism-Telling the Story.”

Doug Birdsall, executive chair of the Lausanne Committee for World Evangelization, spoke in support of Jewish evangelism saying, “The story of Jesus Christ is a message to be shared with the whole world, but especially with the Jewish people, as it is the fullest expression of God’s love relationship with his people.”

LCJE participants adopted a statement which called on “the whole Church to join in presenting the whole gospel of Messiah Jesus to the Jewish people worldwide.” While rejoicing over an increasing number of Messianic congregations, the statement warned against denying an evangelical witness to Jewish people as “the worst possible Christian injustice.”

“We affirm the good news of Jesus is the only hope for the salvation of the Jewish people,” the statement read, adding, “If Jesus is not the Messiah for the Jewish people, then neither is he Christ for the nations. Either Jesus is the Messiah for all, or he is not the Messiah at all.”

The group also denounced contemporary expressions of anti-Semitism and prejudice against Israel while encouraging “evangelism to all the children of Abraham according to the flesh” and prayer “for efforts toward reconciliation between Palestinian Arabs and Israeli Jews in Christ.”

Tuvya Zaretsky, president of the LCJE and an adjunct faculty member of the Pasche Institute of Jewish Studies at Criswell College, noted the historical context for their meeting in Hungary, explaining, “The 1927 Budapest Report documented a growing interest among Jewish people worldwide regarding their destiny and a homeland.Now, on the eve of the state of Israel’s 60th anniversary we rejoice in the stories of an unprecedented openness and opportunity as the gospel is penetrating Israeli society.The gospel of Jesus Christ is as relevant and as unique a spiritual hope today for the Jewish people as it ever has been.”

Behold, he is coming with the clouds, and every eye will see him, even those who pierced him; and all the tribes of the earth will mourn over him. So it is to be. Amen. (Revelation 1:7)

“When Time is No More” will be the theme of the 2008 SBTC Empower Evangelism Conference scheduled Feb. 4-6 at First Baptist Church in Euless. The theme verse, Revelation 1:7, speaks of Jesus Christ’s glorious return to Earth and the consummation of history.

“I chose Revelation 1:7 because it proclaims the second coming of Jesus clearly and definitely,” Don Cass, director of evangelism, told the SBTC missions magazine, Crossroads. “And that’s why I named the conference ‘When Time is No More.’ We want to reinforce the urgency of sharing the gospel of Jesus Christ.”

This year’s conference will include a lineup of speakers from pastors to evangelists to seminary professors preaching on topics related to the time that Christ returns for his church.

The Spanish-language session will begin with the Monday morning session (Feb. 4) at The West Campus of FBC Euless. A women’s conference will begin at 1:30 p.m. Feb. 4, as well as the Conference of Texas Baptist Evangelists. Women’s speakers will include June Hunt of the “Hope for the Heart” radio program.

The 6:30 Monday night session will feature Ergun Caner, president of Liberty Theological Seminary in Lynchburg, Va., and a former Muslim; Memphis, Tenn., pastor Bob Pitman; and Interstate Batteries CEO Norm Miller.

Musicians will include longtime music leader and SBTC evangelism consultant John McKay, Texas-based Shiloh; the Annie Moses Band of Nashville, and musicians from Glenview and Travis Avenue Baptist churches in Fort Worth, The Church on Rush Creek in Arlington; Colonial Hills and Friendly Baptist Churches, both located in Tyler; and Chuck Sullivan, music evangelist from Grayson, Ga.

Tuesday morning’s 8:30 session will feature Sagemont Church of Houston pastor John Morgan, New Orleans Seminary professor Preston Nix and Paige Patterson, president of Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary.

Tuesday afternoon’s session will include longtime Amarillo pastor Stan Coffey, John Meador, pastor of First Baptist Church of Euless, and Len Turner, a vocational evangelist from Woodstock, Ga., and a former pastor of Greenwood Baptist Church, Weatherford.

The conference continues Tuesday evening with Claude Cone, executive director of the Baptist Convention of New Mexico, and Herb Reavis Jr., pastor of North Jacksonville Baptist Church, Jacksonville, Fla.

Wednesday morning’s session begins at 8:45 and features Bailey Stone of Allen, a retired evangelism director of the BGCT; Keller-based evangelist Michael Gott; evangelist David Ring of Franklin, Tenn.; John Moldovan, associate dean for doctoral programs at Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary.

Sermon topics throughout the conference will include “God’s Last Invitation,” “A Portrait of Jesus.” “The Marriage Supper of the Lamb,” and “The New Heaven and a New Earth.”

The senior adult choir of Travis Avenue Baptist Church will sing Wednesday morning, along with Sullivan and Shiloh.

The annual Cooperative Program Luncheon Feb. 5 will be held between sessions on the West Campus. Keynote speaker will be former Florida pastor and SBC president Bobby Welch, now the SBC’s Strategist for Global Evangelical Relations. Registration must be made in advance for tickets to the luncheon, which is usually a sell-out.

A Senior Adult luncheon on Wednesday afternoon will include the Annie Moses Band and keynote speaker Charles Lowery, a humorist and president and CEO of Lowery Institute for Excellence.

Tickets for the CP Luncheon and the Senior Adult Luncheon are available by visiting sbtexas.com/empower or calling 817-552-2500.

“It is my prayer that God will use this conference to create urgency and brokenness in all our lives, and that those attending will return to their cities, towns and rural communities determined to let God use them in their neighborhoods, telling families and friends about Jesus,” Cass said.

“I want every person to believe the gospel is good news?but only if you hear it in time. Jesus is coming again and it may be soon.”