AUSTIN—Texans will pray with “one voice” and “one mind” Saturday, Aug. 2 from 9 a.m. until noon at the Texas State Capitol and throughout their own towns and communities, for rain, revival and restoration.

Texas Gov. Rick Perry sent greetings to event organizers of “Praying Across Texas” July 30, welcoming everyone to participate.

“Throughout our history, Americans have turned to prayer and reflection during times of strength and weakness and in moments of joy and despair. Prayer is an opportunity for majestic communion; through it, joy is amplified, pain is comforted and emptiness is filled up.

“I join you in believing in the power of prayer, and I thank you for your commitment in praying for government leaders, our state and our nation,” Perry wrote. Earlier this year he declared May 1, 2014, “A Day of Prayer” on the anniversary of the National Day of Prayer.

There will be no public address system at the Capitol grounds, and those who attend are encouraged to bring an umbrella and a beach towel or mat upon which to sit or kneel, along with a Bible and prayer journal. There will be a check-in point under the big tree on the east side of the south steps.

Alternatively, individuals living in other parts of the state are encouraged to organize events in their own communities.

For more information, call (512) 249-6535 or (512) 388-3400, or go online to http://www.ndpaustin.org./

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RIO VISTA—First Baptist Church of Rio Vista has become what Pastor Neale Oliver calls a “Great Commission church,” but the church’s overnight transformation has actually taken four years.

Rio Vista is a rural community of 1,000 in Johnson County, south of Fort Worth, with a Class 2A high school and many low-income families.
Oliver came to Rio Vista in 2010 following the resignation of Rio Vista’s longtime pastor. Under the former pastor’s ministry, the church experienced significant growth but progress had stalled, Oliver said.

“My call in ministry is church revitalization,” he said. “God has allowed me to go into churches that have had good times and, for a variety of reasons, are kind of down. They need a head coach, somebody to turn the team around.”

The area and church have proved to be a good fit for Oliver and his family, who moved from Austin where his children, used to smaller communities, had struggled in the big city environment.

A key to revitalization is change, Oliver said.

“When you come into a church that needs to be revitalized, that means the church needs to change in certain areas,” Oliver said. “Revitalization is a process.”

After talking at length with the former pastor, Oliver understood the challenges facing Rio Vista.

“We stepped in. I didn’t really do anything [in terms of change] for a year. We just observed, evaluated, and built relationships,” Oliver said. “You have to win the people’s hearts before you ask for their hands.”

After a year, Oliver, who is certified as a church consultant, recommended to the deacons that the church undergo a consulting process beginning with a church survey concerning the areas of ministry, fellowship, evangelism, outreach, worship, prayer and discipleship.

After the survey results were in, Rio Vista formed a strategic leadership team containing a cross section of members to evaluate the surveys and make recommendations to the deacons and church.

“I let them make the recommendations; it wasn’t me,” Oliver noted.

“They made two or three recommendations per area and we put it together in a report,” Oliver recalled. It was October 2012, but the church was not yet ready to implement all the recommendations.

“So we put things on hold awhile,” Oliver said. Growth remained slow.

“In January 2014, we turned a corner,” he said. “At that point we had been seven years in decline. If we continued at this rate, in eight years we would close the doors and the church would cease to exist.”

Church leadership emerged from a January 2014 meeting fully supportive of Oliver and the original recommendations.

Change began immediately, and it began with prayer.

In February, the church conducted 28 days of prayer from 6 a.m. to midnight.

“We asked people to come to the church to pray. We provided notebooks, prayer requests and guides in a designated prayer room that had been built when the church sanctuary was constructed,” Oliver said. Each week people signed up for slots. Oliver usually took the last slot and closed up the church each evening.

“Prayer was a key to revitalization. You must be a church that prays—for the community, the church, lost people. It’s part of the process of being a revitalized church. Prayer is an absolute necessity,” said Oliver, who noted that the church is continuing its prayer emphasis.
After the 28 days of prayer, Oliver felt that developing an outreach ministry was next in helping Rio Vista become a Great Commission church.

“Jesus tells us to go. We really weren’t doing anything to go back into our community to minister,” Oliver said. “One reason a church declines is a lack of evangelism.”

Oliver introduced the GROW outreach program developed in the 1990s by Jerry Tidwell to Rio Vista.

“The basis of GROW is that a church fields four teams; each team meets once a month,” Oliver explained. The teams are led by captains and assistant captains.

“The premise is that not everyone is comfortable visiting, but some like to write letters or make phone calls. GROW allows you to do what you feel comfortable doing.”

Since May 2014, four teams of 15 adults and a team of students have met at the church one Sunday evening per month. The G team meets the first Sunday, the R team the second, and so on. Some of the 15 team members make visits in the community; others will write notes or letters to shut ins or visitors. Others will make phone calls to members who have been absent from church.

“We have gone from making no contacts, having no outreach, to averaging 150 contacts per week. Letters are going out of our church into the families of our community,” Oliver said. Families whose children attended VBS or the church’s Easter egg hunt will be contacted, for example.

“All that is required is to devote 90 minutes one night per month to the program,” said Oliver, who added that for a variety of reasons, Rio Vista decided to suspend traditional Sunday night church services and implement the outreach program then.

“In our community, Sunday night is the night to do it. You don’t compete with Friday night football, Monday night volleyball, and so on,” Oliver said. “On Sunday nights, most families are home, preparing for school or work the next week.”

Visitation, letter writing and phone calling are conducted each Sunday from 7–8, then team members reassemble at the church to report. Team members are home by 8:30, according to Oliver.

“It’s one night a month, and you become a Great Commission Christian,” Oliver said.

“Rio Vista has bought into it. We went from doing nothing to doing GROW.”

People have been saved; baptisms of new believers have increased significantly. Approximately two dozen families have been ministered to and some have started attending Rio Vista.

“We’ve baptized new believers six out of the last eight weeks,” Oliver said in June.

The church was even able to minister to the family of a local high school student killed in a car wreck, holding the funeral and reaching out to the young man’s mother and brother.

“We average 100 in Sunday School; 60 are involved in GROW,” said Oliver, who predicted that Rio Vista would not see the usual summer downturn in attendance this year.

Pastors of larger churches in Joshua and Cedar Hill have expressed interest in Rio Vista’s story and implementation of the GROW outreach program.

GROW books and manuals are available through LifeWay stores.

“Any church can do GROW effectively,” Oliver said. “I cannot imagine the impact this is going to have on our church and community.”

Fear gripped Melissa Campbell’s heart as she stood at the door. Across the threshold stood a self-professed atheist who just the week before said there had to be a “catch” to the evangelistic team’s visit to her Austin home. 

The fear had begun several hours before with unbidden thoughts: “No one’s receptive. They don’t want to hear. I am just going to be pushy.” 

Melissa and Fred Campbell, members of Great Hills Baptist Church in Austin, are using the T4T method of church planting and discipleship promoted by the Southern Baptist International Mission Board and Greater Europe Mission to reach Austin and other cities for Christ (see related story).

Campbell remembered shaking off the thoughts and reciting Acts 1:8 out loud: “But you will receive power when the Holy Spirit comes on you; and you will be my witnesses in Jerusalem, and in all Judea, and Samaria, and to the ends of the earth.”

Moments later the woman ushered Campbell’s team inside her house for the second time—this time, however, sensing there was no “catch.” Sharing a biblical story from Luke 7, Campbell listened as the woman told her there were “many reasons” she could not pray.

Sensing the woman’s confusion, Campbell was patient. She returned with her husband, Fred, for several weeks, each time sharing more with the woman about the claims of Christ.

Finally, one night the woman’s tone changed, and the team was greeted with a Nativity scene in the living room. They learned the woman prayed to receive Christ in the early hours of that morning. From there, she stepped onto a road of discipleship at her apartment building which lasted several months until she relocated to another part of the state.

“It’s stuff like that, that happens all the time,” Campbell said of her new commitment to evangelism and discipleship. “I can’t believe the relationship I have with [God] now, versus sort of sitting there in fear.”

The once-atheist woman is just one who comes to mind when Campbell thinks about how many others have responded since she and her husband, out of obedience to God, left their 3,800-square-foot home behind to make themselves more available by living in a large, diverse apartment community in the city.

One younger Hispanic woman—probably in her 20s—seemed reassured that Campbell, and not just her husband, affirmed what was being shared.

“She was relating to me woman to woman,” Campbell said. “I remember asking the Lord to give me the words to say.”

Campbell said that while it might be difficult for some families to make the transition to full-time ministry by selling homes and businesses, her three adult daughters and 9-year-old son have taken the changes in stride.

“The fun we had growing up as a family was us, as a family, serving other families,” Campbell said.

Despite having financial resources, the family has lived simply, she said.

The Campbells’ one married daughter is a teacher, and the other two daughters are both seniors in college—one at the University of Texas and the other at the University of Mary Hardin Baylor. Their son, Joshua, recently went on a training mission with them and wrote his father a note afterwards: “Thank you for taking me to the training to learn about the Almighty King.”

Watching people answer the claims of Christ and grow through discipleship while at the same time realizing she has worked through her own fear of sharing Christ has been an unexpected gift to Campbell.

“I started noticing that when I participated in what God was doing on a daily basis, I was having to rely on him for the words to say to overcome my fear,” Campbell said. “Sometimes I still go in fear, and that’s where he meets me.”

Through it all, however, Campbell describes a supernatural peace that comes from knowing she is doing the right thing and from knowing in advance what she has been prompted to say through evangelism and discipleship training.

“My walk with [Christ] changed,” Campbell said. “I thought that fear would be something I would never be able to overcome. He proved himself very faithful to meet me exactly at my point of need, and he would literally deliver me. It’s like the Bible sort of came alive.”

Living in an international community of 4,200 adults, Campbell said she recently began a Bible study with a Muslim and a Hindu.

“For us, our fun is what we are doing,” Campbell said. “Talking about Jesus is fun for us, and advancing the kingdom is our hobby. This is what we choose to do.”

A current article in Relevant suggests that Christians are skeptical of modern treatments of the Bible by Hollywood because we fear art. This is in the context of new projects that promise to tell the story of Moses and David, and perhaps the recent Noah movie. Actually the writer says that we are “afraid” of Hollywood.

Briefly, let’s consider the word “fear.” Some have obviously lost their dictionaries and believe that the word means “disagree with” or “fail to fall all over oneself in breathless affirmation.” Overuse of words like “homophobia” also demonstrate this misunderstanding. That aside, the article indicates a deep misunderstanding of Christian doctrine by even a hipster Christian magazine.

Art, we are told, says true things rather than merely factual ones. I agree. Metaphor, parable and allegory were used throughout Scripture to convey true things that transcended a mere chronology. I believe things that touch our emotions like music or poetry or other forms of art can bear content beyond facts without denying the facts of a chronology—they actually can add meaning and understanding to a literal subject. I’m a fan of such efforts. Mel Gibson did a stellar job in the Passion of the Christ. The art was striking as he showed Jesus crushing the serpent’s head walking out of Gethsemane and as he showed Satan tracking Jesus on the path to Calvary. These were nice touches that rang true rather than factual. 

But, a lot of silly things are swept into the tent of “art.” In the recent Noah movie, the addition of rock monsters to represent fallen angels and their redemption by helping Noah’s family is beyond metaphor; it is revisionist theology done in a way to suggest that the screenwriter or director was theologically deaf rather than deft. Other elements of the movie appeared to be pandering to various audiences who might not consider the destruction of the earth sufficiently dramatic. I wasn’t afraid of it; the response was more derision.

Who will be the hero of the Moses movie, the Lord or Moses? Will any remnant of David as the king whose line will continue forever through the Messiah or David as the man who was the best repenter in the Bible remain? I’ll be surprised, but pleasantly surprised. Frankly, I favor Hollywood’s efforts to turn biblical stories into cinema. If they’ll treat the content of the story as respectfully as most directors have treated Shakespeare then we’ll be thrilled. They do not understand enough of the truth to be able to convey it though metaphor. They are just unqualified to play artist with the storylines.  

Those of us who like this sort of thing hope that those who make movies will stick to what they know. Make the images dramatize a good story. That’s an art that many of us admire and recognize. If you don’t do that we’ll critique the effort and perhaps suggest to others that they stay home and read the book. We won’t riot or threaten the artists and most of us won’t abandon the medium of film. But we won’t praise a half-hearted effort or a ham fisted handling of the greatest story ever told. We’re not stupid and for crying out loud we’re not afraid of you—perhaps we’re discerning. It’s conceivable that some who fancy themselves artsy consider a discerning consumer the most fearsome thing of all.