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HALLSVILLE?The collaborative effort of six churches in the Longview area resulted in 125 students praying to receive Christ during a four-day evangelistic event Sept. 24-27, a Longview pastor said. The meetings were held in Hallsville, a community near Longview, on two adjoining athletic fields at Hallsville High School, said Pastor Steve Cochran of Macedonia Baptist Church, one of the event sponsors. The event was dubbed “Amplified” and featured a Sunday night concert with Christian band “Big Daddy Weave,” strength feats from Team Impact member Tracy Marcum and nightly evangelistic messages from Thomas Young of Sugar Land, Cochran said. The final night included a demonstration from Chaos on Wheels, a Christian BMX team, which drew many kids “churches are not able to get in front of,” Cochran said, adding that most who made decisions were not affiliated with any church. Representatives from the six churches are sharing in follow up, Cochran said, with at least one instance of a church sending a student to another church where he had some relationships already established, he said. “The amazing thing is the partnership of these churches coming together was literally phenomenal,” Cochran said. “Adults continued to remark how important this is and how we need to come back and do this again next year.” Two Longview churches?Macedonia and Woodland Hills Baptist Church?and Hallsville’s First Baptist Church, First United Methodist Church, Mulberry Springs Baptist Church and Pine Forest Baptist Church worked together over 15 weeks to organize and coordinate the event, Cochran said. With tents provided by East Texas Baptist Men from Mount Enterprise, the meetings, which lasted through Wednesday, drew between 500 and 850 each night. “It was really exciting to see so many adults and students come out to the crusade,” said Brad Bunting, SBTC youth evangelism associate. “Thomas Young did a great job of preaching the gospel in a very clear and compelling manner, and when he gave the invitation, numerous people responded. It was a great example of what can happen when churches work together for the sake of the gospel.” Cochran said he first talked with school officials about using the high school for a crusade event several years ago to no avail, but then last spring they embraced the idea, he said. He initially contacted about 25 churches to draw interest, but only two were represented at the first planning meeting late last spring. “I sent out countless letters to let people know what we were doing,” Cochran recounted. “Early on I recommended Thomas Young because we had had him before and he is very effective in speaking to young people. We also knew we needed name recognition for the first night. We began making phone calls. It just so happened that Big Daddy Weave was going to be in our area. We asked them to come and they came.” Cochran said the participation also grew?from two churches to six. Various local leaders assumed responsibility for organizational areas. For example, the local Methodist pastor, “a very evangelistic guy,” Cochran noted, took on prayer preparation, enlisting local Sunday School classes as prayer partners. The week of the event, two of the speakers, Team Impact’s Marcum and evangelist Young, addressed students during school assemblies at the 1,200-student, Class 4A high school. Cochran said Marcum talked to students about the importance of making wise life decisions, and Young talked about the painful results of drug and alcohol abuse. Neither spoke in explicitly religious language, but they were able to promote the evening events, which drew many kids, Cochran said. |
