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PFLUGERVILLE?First, they helped turn back gambling in their town, and lately members of the First Baptist Church of Pflugerville have helped elect six professing Christians to the Pflugerville City Council, three of whom are members of the church.
The effort was part of a massive mobilization by townspeople and churches to keep their community “family first.”
“We have great leaders in the community now and they are not thinking like the world,” said Mike Northen, the associate pastor of education and administration for First Baptist Church. “We wanted people who took a biblical approach to city government.”
In 2004, the community began to mobilize after realizing that Pflugerville, which has a population close to 35,000, was close to becoming a gaming town, with the threat of horse racing and related gambling being proposed by the Austin Jockey Club.
When the churches and others in town began to learn about the destructive effects that often follow the gambling industry, they began to organize to stop the proposal.
“A lot of things at race tracks go on that you just don’t know about,” Northen said. “You can find any vice you want to there.”
A grassroots movement began within the community. At FBC, Pastor Steve Washburn and the staff made it a priority to battle the horse-track initiative. So, they began encouraging their church and community to put families first.
“We have always tried hard to be a community neighbor,” said Northen, who has been at FBC for nine years. “We sometimes have two or three groups a night coming into the church to use our facilities for their meetings and functions.”
Concerned citizens began going door-to-door asking people to sign a petition to keep the horse track out.
Pflugerville Pfamilies Pfirst, a group founded to uphold community standards of morality and values, was formed and played a prominent role in fighting against the track initiative. Many citizens such as Northen simply began to do some investigating on the horse racing industry and came up with significant information that could be used to support a stance against AJC, finding that gambling addictions, drug use, and prostitution have all been linked to horse racing.
“I had many sleepless nights? All of us were in it together,” Northen said. “But we were strong and we kept fighting them.”
After the dust settled, the race track initiative died, not because of a decisive vote, but because the idea of horse racing in Pflugerville was overwhelmingly unpopular. According to a non-binding referendum vote, 70 percent of the town was against the race track.
“When the light is shed on them, things will start coming out and they can’t pull the wool over our eyes anymore,” Northen said. “They backed out when they realized that we weren’t going to quit.”
Since the horse-racing initiative, the town that has a school district population higher than the town population has become more alert on issues that stand in opposition to the community’s values.
“It woke up our church members and the rest of the population that they need to pay attention to city government,” Northen said.
The community has turned back strip joints and liquor stores, while managing each year since the horse-racing initiative to progressively elect evangelical Christian leaders in their town. In the last three city council elections, there has been a steady increase in the number of Christians elected.
The Lord has used this to affect the church as well, Northen said. Not only have pastors learned how to approach the sensitive subject of social and political issues, but they have also grown to appreciate one another as more people in the community are attending church.
“The pastors here are preaching God’s word,” Northen added. “We wanted to see a stronger a Christian community, and more people in the community are going to church.”
