North Carolina Baptists need to work to reclaim the younger
generation; churches need encouragement and training to reach out to internationals;
and while church planting is arguably a priority for North Carolina Baptists,
there is concern that not enough emphasis is being placed on shoring up
existing churches. So far, in the first five of 14 Vision Fulfillment forums,
these are the main themes emerging. However as expected, a different set of
priorities surface each week as the committee moves from region to region.
The Vision Fulfillment (VF) forums are designed to allow the
VF Committee and Baptist State Convention of North Carolina (BSC)
staff to hear the heart and desires of North Carolina Baptists. During the
meetings, the committee makes a brief introduction and asks a few questions to
get the conversation going, but the goal is to hear from pastors and church
leaders about how the Convention is doing in its job of serving churches.
Younger generations
The forums have been a good source of education for people
who might not know what the BSC can offer
churches. Tadd Grandstaff, pastor of Pine Ridge Church in Haw River and member
of the VF Committee, is a younger generation pastor who has seen value in these
sessions. “I think it’s important to be part of these forums because I have
been someone that has felt disengaged from the (Convention) in the past.”
Grandstaff said he’s learned more in the last few weeks than
he has in the last few years about how things operate in the Convention.
“I really believe in the changes that the (Convention) is
willing to make for the future,” Grandstaff said. “They realize that there
has been a disconnect for a lot of people and they’re proactively trying to
bridge that gap.”
Speaking at the Forum in Elizabeth
City, Mark Purdy with Fellowship
Baptist Church
said reaching younger Baptists may require that both sides work to find common
ground. “It’s a change in mindset in a younger generation and how we get them
to come back to where we’re at, or us change to go with them. They don’t want
to sit in meetings and listen to committee reports. They want to go out and put
their hands on something and see results.”
Reaching internationals
The importance of reaching out to internationals is a topic
that often emerges in the forums. Corinth
Baptist Church
in Elizabeth City
received assistance from the Convention to launch an outreach to an Asian
population in their community. Lee Johnson with Corinth
said the outreach is yielding fruit.
“Six or seven months ago, we started an Asian outreach and
we contacted the State Convention. Ralph Garay has been a big help. He hooked
us up with some folks that helped us get it started. And we’ve had one person
actually surrender his life to Jesus Christ, and they found three believers,
and we look at a baptism in May here of these Chinese believers.”
Greg Barefoot, pastor of Oakdale
Baptist Church
in Statesville, shared his
congregation’s efforts to establish ministry to Hispanics, not as a separate
ministry but as part of the congregation’s existing ministries. He would like
to see the Convention assisting other churches in these kinds of efforts. “We
spend a lot of time and effort planting churches to reach other people groups,
and I’m not against that, but we need to invest more in incorporating other
people groups into existing churches.”
Phil Addison, pastor of Stony
Point Baptist Church,
spoke at the forum in Winston-Salem
and suggested that some current Convention ministries seem to compete with one
another.
“When I was a church planter it was ‘target group, target
group, target group’ but then I go to multicultural evangelism conferences and
hear, ‘everybody, everybody, everybody.’ How does the Convention really want to
do it?” Addison also shared concerns about church
planting efforts for both ethnic church plants and Anglo church plants appearing
to be driven by numbers more than by disciple making. “It’s got to be healthy
churches begetting healthy churches. And that is not what’s taking place in the
Southern Baptist Convention, much less in my community,” Addison
said.
Strengthening churches
During the VF Forum in Elizabeth
City, Boyce Porter, pastor of Geneva
Baptist Church
in Camden, emphasized the
importance of strengthening existing churches. “All around me, I see churches
that are dying. They’re churches with great histories. They’re churches that
support and give to missions through the Cooperative Program, and I’ve been
placed in one of those churches. I went there four years ago. I think we had 18
people, and praise the Lord we’re running 60 and 70 now. And God has seen fit
to send us some children and some youth. But, I see churches all around me that
are dying. And most of the pastors are bi-vocational and they don’t have the
time required of them. And I just wonder if there’s not some way that, as a
Convention, we can develop teams, similar to new church plant teams, to go to
these churches, to come alongside the pastor and to work to reach out into the
field around them.”
Speaking at the Winston-Salem
forum, John Small, a member of Parkway
Baptist Church
in Greensboro who also serves as
Convention legal counsel said, “If we’re going to talk about strengthening
existing churches, the only way to do that is to strengthen the families that
make up the churches.” Small continued that his work puts him in contact with
individuals from numerous religious and non-religious backgrounds on a daily
basis. As a result, he believes that some of these groups are actually doing
more to strengthen families than we are as Southern Baptists. He concluded his
remarks by saying, “These groups are doing it (strengthening families) without
Jesus Christ. We can do it and should be doing it with Jesus Christ.”
Miscellaneous
Those speaking at the VF Forums have had the opportunity to
voice their concerns and feedback directly to those people who are in positions
to make decisions on how Cooperative Program dollars are spent in North
Carolina. Participating in most of the forums are the
pastors who have been elected as officers of
the Convention (see www.ncbaptist.org/vf
for committee members) as well as top-level staff, including Milton Hollifield,
executive director-treasurer and BSC
executive leaders. The forums are designed to discuss how well the Convention
is implementing The Seven Pillars vision statement, but discussion can take any
direction.
When the forums are held in the extreme east or west of our
state, there are invariably comments on a perception that these parts of the
state are largely ignored by the BSC. Gerald
Morris, director of missions for Tuckaseigee Association, said he feels small churches
in the Convention are not given enough consideration, especially in the far
Western part of the state. “North Carolina
does not stop at Asheville. I think
often the small churches are forgotten. In our association, we have five to six
full-time pastors out of 36 pastors in our association.” The rest are
bi-vocational. Morris said he feels that only large churches are considered
successful churches.
VF Committee Chairman Allan Blume said, “I guarantee you
that none of the staff and Convention officers
here tonight think that.” Blume suggested that much of the reputation of the BSC
may be 10 to 15 years old.
“This is a new day — a new Convention. It’s an exciting
day,” Blume said.
Lynn Sasser, executive leader of congregational services
responded that the BSC’s emphasis is on
church health and discipleship and not church growth. Approximately 90 percent
of North Carolina churches have
fewer than 400 in attendance in Sunday School.
Rob Roberts, associational missionary at Chowan Baptist
Association said, “I just wanted to say, on behalf of this association, one of
the things I was told when I came here two and a half years ago, is that once
you cross 95, you don’t see anything from the Baptist State Convention. And
I’ve discovered that not to be the case. I discovered that it’s kind of a
reciprocal thing; we make an effort, y’all make an effort. And everything that
I have asked the State Convention to participate in, I mean you guys have
always been there to help, and I just want to say thank you on behalf of our
association for the willingness of you guys to give us the resources and to
provide that expertise as well.”
In response to a question at the Franklin Forum on March 24
about requirements for new church planters, Bryon Lamb, pastor at LifeSpring
Community Church in Franklin said, “They do give you an assessment (before you
are qualified as a church planter) and I have never been drilled like that
before. I got challenged and I challenged them back. I got trained and didn’t
have to pay anything for it.”
LifeSpring was planted in December 2010. All church planters
must sign off on the Baptist Faith and Message and receive funding and
oversight by a church planting consultant for two years after inception. Lamb
appreciates the help. “We are forever indebted to the Cooperative Program,” he
said.
There are nine more Vision Fulfillment Forums on the
schedule. You can find one nearest to you by going to www.ncbaptist.org/vf. If
you are unable to attend a forum but would like to have an opportunity to provide
feedback, please contact members of the committee or send an email to [email protected].
(SPECIAL NOTE — Thank you for your continued support of the Biblical
Recorder site. During this interim period while we are searching for a new
Editor/President the comments section will be temporarily discontinued. Thank
you for your understanding and patience in this. If you do have comments or
issues with items we run, please contact [email protected]
or call 919-847-2127.)