FRANKSTON  In 2015, there were only five people left. They called themselves “the board.” They kept the grass mowed and utilities paid, but the church wasn’t financially stable. It was only a matter of time before they closed the doors of Lakeside Baptist Church.

It was never meant to be a mega-church. It was formed solely to reach the small country community in and around Frankston, located in East Texas. But as time passed, and elderly members along with it, the congregation dwindled. They didn’t officially disband, deciding instead to meet in a “house church” nearby, but they did finally call it quits and walk away.

Fast forward to May 2017. George Folmar and his wife, Linda, both natives to the area, had recently retired and returned to the area after more than 47 years of pastoring churches. He was still ministering as an interim and supply preacher, but he’d decided to break from full-time pastoring.

Even so, the potential to reach people in Frankston wasn’t lost on him. He’d already pastored churches in the area on three different occasions and had returned to a community where he was known.

Several times a week, he drove by the abandoned Lakeside Baptist Church, started in 1975 by a group of people from First Baptist Church in Frankston. He wondered why this long-time church had closed its doors. 

On May 18, 2017, George went to a nearby LifeWay bookstore in Tyler. As he browsed the aisles, he ran into a man on “the board” at Lakeside Baptist. He learned what had happened and was offered a chance to kickstart the congregation again. They prayed together right there in the bookstore.

“I didn’t have a desire to be the pastor, but I didn’t have a desire to not be the pastor either,” George said. “Two weeks later, he called. We met a few more times so they could answer my questions, but I knew my answer was ‘yes.’ I’d already been praying out of Acts 16:9 where Paul, at midnight, received a call from Macedonia to go and help them.”

Once they voted and made it official, George was taken to the bank where everything was turned over to him. He was handed a checkbook and told he had $800 to work with.

“My wife and I were literally the only people in the church at that point,” George said. “There were still three members of the church who had started going somewhere else, and they decided to come back and be a part of congregation. I’d never walked into a situation like this in all my years of pastoring.”

George got to work. The church was renamed Lighthouse Baptist Chapel. All the funds passed on were used to continue paying the bills. And then he began to pray, “Lord, you put me here, so now we need your help.”

He called a professional cleaning company to sanitize the musty, unused building. They quoted him $1,800, so George apologized for wasting their time and explained the situation. At the end of it, they had cut the bill in half and started to work immediately. 

He called a leveling company to repair major foundation issues. They quoted him $25,000. There was no way they could pay that amount, but George says the money they needed to pay the crew every day showed up. God provided. 

On July 15, 2017, Lighthouse Baptist Chapel reopened its doors and the first service took place. Because of a local newspaper article about the rebirth of Lighthouse, the handful of charter members who showed up that morning to worship were joined by 90 other people in the community. Today, they run a steady 65 in a country church that comfortably seats 80.

All along, God has continued to delight the membership with one miracle after another: free air conditioning repair; worship leaders who show up each week without asking for a dime; an excavation company that completed nearly $35,000 worth of work for nothing; and a brand-new portable building donated to be the church office.

“We hadn’t even been meeting a month when a couple came to me and said they had $35,000 to give to the church,” George said. “They said, ‘We’re probably not going to join your church, but we want this used for a local benevolence fund. You know the people and who needs help.’ Over the past two years, we’ve been able to help numerous people out of it and keep it going through contributing from our own funds.”

The church has even received support from other churches. Jerry Lundy, the pastor of Harmony Baptist Church in Louisville, Miss., and long-time friend of George, called and said, “Our church feels led to give your church 1 percent of our monthly income.” They’ve received a check every month since then.

On May 21, 2018, heartbreak occurred.

Linda, George’s wife, passed away from Phase 4 ovarian cancer. They were married for 46 years and she, his biggest cheerleader, was sold on serving Lighthouse Baptist Chapel from the moment God called them. As a public school teacher for 37 years, her calling and passion was children’s ministry.

“She fought the good fight,” George said. “She was so helpful and supportive of me and of this church. She loved kids and got excited about children’s ministry—Sunday School and VBS. Through the church, God has been so loving and kind. It’s been heaven on earth—before and after she died. Her memory and legacy live on here.”

In July 2018, on the one-year anniversary of the launch of Lighthouse Baptist, the church celebrated by adding five new members and baptizing three people, one of whom is the local mayor in Coffee City.

“I started out as a chaplain in law enforcement. Long ago, I felt like God put me there to identify with and minister to that specific group,” George said. “Having that background, I visited the mayor of Coffee City when her husband, a law enforcement officer, passed away. She asked me to do his service and started coming to our church about a month later. The Holy Spirit convicted her that she was lost, she accepted Christ, and we baptized her.”

Today, the congregation, made up mostly of unchurched people, is bursting at the seams and looking to expand by way of a new 250-seat auditorium and classrooms.

“If I were to suggest borrowing money, the church would do it, but I don’t believe we need to do that,” George said. “We’ve been asking God to meet our needs daily. I tell our church that God is big enough. We trust him with our souls, so we need to trust him with the smaller things like a building. I’ve always trusted God to provide—and he has. This is a church who knows who they are and who God is, and there are God-sized things happening here.”  

HOUSTON  Described as “leadership training for all aspects of ministry,” this year’s EQUIP church ministry conference will include more than 90 speakers and some 260 breakout sessions covering an expanded range of ministry contexts.

Organizers for the Aug. 10 event at Houston’s Champion Forest Baptist Church, sponsored by the Southern Baptists of Texas Convention, hope to exceed in number the 1,600 people who attended last year’s conference at North Richland Hills Baptist Church near Fort Worth. This year’s theme is “Reaching Gen Z.”

“This year we’ll also have Spanish-language, Korean-language and black-culture equipping tracks,” Mark Yoakum, SBTC’s director of church ministries, told the TEXAN. “We have a particularly strong lineup this year in preschool and children’s ministry, with offerings such as ‘How to Teach Kids When They Can’t Stop Wiggling.’

“We’ll have four sessions on ministering to special-needs kids,” Yoakum said. “In the youth area there’s a session on ‘Teens and God’s Design for Gender’ and a session on ‘Ministry for Spiritual Orphans,’ aimed at leaders of teens who attend church without their parents.”

EQUIP 2019 will include 20 breakout sessions in the Spanish-language track led by ten session leaders; 12 Asian ministry sessions led by five different speakers, including four specifically for pastors; 32 sessions for churches that worship in the black church context, led by nine different speakers, and much more. The 260 breakout sessions will cover 21 ministry categories (see sbtexas.com/equip for a complete list). 

Keynote speaker Steve Parr is expected to address his current research on “Gen Z,” those born since 2001. In 2015, Parr wrote Why They
Strayed/Stayed, addressing Millennials’ spiritual attitudes. Parr, vice president of staff coordination and development for the Georgia Baptist Mission Board, was well received at last year’s Heart of the Child Conference, Yoakum noted. 

“A lot of people are talking about Millennials—those born between 1985 and 2000—but not many are focusing on those born since,” Yoakum said. “The older people get, the harder it is to reach them. If we can reach them for Christ as children and teens, they’ve got a whole lifetime to serve him, and if we don’t reach them now, it’s going to be harder and harder to reach them.”

EQUIP is attractive to church volunteers who work during the week because it is a one-day training, said Sonny Hathaway, pastor of LaBelle Baptist Church in Beaumont. 

“I like that in my role as an Ephesians 4 equipper, the SBTC is committed to come alongside me in helping our leaders and future leaders grow in their confidence and passion for the church,” Hathaway said, referring to Ephesians 4:12-13, which speaks of the pastoral role “to equip his people for works of service, so that the body of Christ may be built up … to the whole measure of the fullness of Christ.”

“The number and quality of the breakouts is top notch,” Hathaway continued. “I’ve been in pastoral ministry at churches of all sizes and I can tell you that any pastor and/or church would benefit from sending their volunteers to EQUIP.”

In 2014, SBTC leaders began hand-delivering the promotional materials for the conference, including the EQUIP program, to churches within a 60-mile radius of the host church. The conference alternates between sites in north and south Texas.

“Now it’s just grown by word of mouth,” Yoakum said. “We bring in some of the best speakers and leaders available. This is probably the number one training event in the nation for lay leaders.”

Breakout sessions include age-graded, as well as gender-, culture- and ministry-based categories.

“Leading with Love” will be led by Janice Pender, pastor’s wife at Fallbrook Baptist Church in Houston, a fast-growing church that worships in a black cultural context. “Tightening the Marriage Knot” is another in EQUIPs “women’s category.” Among topics in men’s ministry: “Reaching Men Who Don’t Fit in Your Box” and “The Father’s Family Blessing on a Post-Modern Family.”

For pastors: “Marks of a Mentor” and “Preaching with Relevance,” “Black Church Revitalization,” “Jumpstarting your Church,” and “Introducing Change without Blowing Up Your Church.”

There are 20 sessions planned on ministering to families that tackle single-parenthood, blended families, ministering to those who parent grandchildren, and engaging families who have alternative lifestyles.

Charles Draper of Houston-area Spring Baptist Church told the TEXAN it’s important to him to be able to take his entire teaching team to an affordable conference that gives them access to “top-notch ministry leaders from all over Texas and the United States.”

The $10 per person pre-registration incudes a Chick-Fil-A box lunch. It’s $15 per person the day of the event, which opens for registration at 8 a.m. Saturday, Aug. 10. The first session starts at 8:45 a.m. 

“Fathers, do not provoke your children to anger, but bring them up in the discipline and instruction of the Lord.” —Ephesians 6:4

Before Jeanine and I were married, several people told us that marriage would be hard. In fact, they said that the first year of marriage would be the hardest. By God’s grace, we found that was not the case. But, I have to confess, parenting is the hardest, most humbling task I have ever had to do. If I ever think I have already obtained the goal of the upward call in Christ Jesus, parenting helps me realize how far I have yet to go. Parenting our five daughters magnifies my sins, especially, the sin of impatience. But this is God’s design. If we humble ourselves before God, he uses our children to expose our own sin and to sanctify us. In other words, all those times our kids make us want to pull our hair out are opportunities for growth in the grace and knowledge of Jesus Christ. And, they are opportunities for gospel conversations with our children, both believing and unbelieving children. Here are a couple of thoughts on why the humility of parenting is of great benefit to us.

Parenting exposes the progress of our sanctification. Before we ever teach our children the truth of who God is for us in Christ, we are displaying our faith as we live it out before them. Our children are watching us, noticing our hypocrisies, lies, speech, and conduct. Parenting is hard and humbling because our family observes us when we respond to the difficulties of life, when we have conflict with our spouse, and when we have conflict with one another. It is at home where living in light of the gospel counts the most, but for too many, especially pastors, this is where it matters the least. Sadly, there’s something about being at home and around those we know have to love us that we let down our guard and stop fighting against our own sin. Let us, instead, make it a priority to grow in the grace and knowledge of Christ so that we may live holy lives before our families. May we, as parents, provide a picture of the gospel at home.

Parenting helps us better understand and apply the gospel. This is good news! Unfortunately, much parenting has behavior modification as its goal. When this is the case, we instill in our children a works-righteousness mentality—“do this, and/or you’ll get this.” I don’t mean to imply that we should not hold our children to a biblical standard or that we should not discipline our children when they transgress God’s standard. My point is simply that keeping commandments is not the ultimate goal of parenting. The ultimate aim of parenting is that our children would “set their hope in God” (Psalm 78:7) or as Paul says, that our children would become “wise for salvation through faith in Jesus Christ” (2 Timothy 3:15). If they love Christ, they will keep his commandments.

A biblical understanding of the gospel takes into account human inability to justify ourselves before a holy God; therefore, we set God’s standard before our children to show them what God requires and to expose their rebellion. Sinfulness and rebellion against God’s standard receive God’s judgment. So, when our children rebel against God and his Word, we discipline them accordingly with the purpose that they would understand God’s justice and, hopefully, escape his final judgment.Throughout our parenting we should continually display God’s covenant love, grace, mercy, and forgiveness so that our children would see that while their rebellion deserves punishment, God forgives repentant sinners through the person and work of his own son, Jesus Christ.  

Parenting is the hardest thing I’ve ever had to do (pastoring is a very close second), and I know many other parents find it hard too. But let me encourage you. If you were a perfect parent, your children would not need Jesus. If your children were perfect, they would not need Jesus. As it stands, we all need Jesus, so we’re all in the same boat. Personally, I’ve been helped by a number of resources on parenting, but recently, I read Paul Tripp’s book titled Parenting: 14 Gospel Principles that can Radically Change Your Parenting, and I was greatly blessed by it. Pick up a copy; read it with your spouse; and humble yourselves before the Lord, asking him to allow you to continue to grow in the grace and knowledge of Christ and to give you the grace to raise children who hope in God.