DALLAS?Tucked into W.A. Criswell’s sermon reflecting on 25 years of pastoring First Baptist Church of Dallas was a passing reference to his desire to establish a school where ministers and lay leaders could study the Bible.
“I’d love to see us build, organize in these great facilities, a Bible Institute. We can do that at night and carry on all the work of this church just the same; it won’t interfere,” Criswell told his congregation in the Oct. 5, 1969 address.
Forty years later Criswell College has more than 1,800 alumni spread globally, carrying out the founder’s vision “to teach the faith, to preach Jesus, to make known this Word of God and to mediate the truth of the Lord.”
The Dallas-based school launches a yearlong celebration on Oct. 5 with a Centennial Expository Preaching Conference featuring David Allen, R. Alan Street, Mac Brunson, Greg Heisler, O.S. Hawkins and the late Criswell himself?by videotape. Included in the $40 registration fee is a commemorative DVD set of famous sermons by Criswell, as well as the Monday evening dinner and Tuesday lunch.
In addition to their sermons on “Prophetic Preaching in a Decaying Society,” each speaker will respond in a question-and-answer session on how he prepares his sermons. A 1980 sermon that Criswell delivered on “Ishmael: Islam and the Oil Slick” is being promoted as having great application today and will be shown along with his presentation on sermon preparation in his study.
Criswell offered a little more detail of his vision for the school in an Oct. 11, 1969 sermon. Drawing from 1 Corinthians 9:16, he described “some of the things that open our hearts to what God is doing” through the assignment of the downtown church.
“Paul used an expression that is so descriptive of how we feel about this: ‘Necessity is laid upon me. I must.'”
Adapting the words of a poem Emerson penned a century earlier, Criswell recited:
So nigh is grandeur to our dust,
So near is God to man,
When the Lord whispers low, “Thou must!”
The church replies, “I can!”
Criswell explained why the church must accept the responsibility of teaching religious faith, praising then-prevalent avenues of Sunday School, Training Union, Royal Ambassadors and Girls Auxiliary as proper responses.
Still, he wanted more. “I’d like for us to build and to organize in this church a Bible Institute, teaching the Word of God on an adult level, even a college and a seminary level. And people come from our own congregation, from the city, and our preachers from all over being taught the Word of God. Teaching is a necessity laid upon us because of the fabric, the color of the law of our land.”
Criswell asked James W. Bryant, his minister of evangelism and church organization, to lead the effort, aided by 16 deacons who studied the feasibility. A year later on Oct. 7, 1970, the church enthusiastically embraced the recommendation that “Our church should establish an institute for intensive Bible study, based on conservative evangelical Christianity as preached and practiced in our church.”
Graduates of the college have gone on to serve in leading pastoral positions, evangelistic ministries, Jewish outreach ministries, college and seminary faculty positions, college and seminary presidencies, foreign mission service, biblical counselors, and service to denominational agencies.
The biblical studies major is required of all undergraduate students, who also may take a second major in related disciplines. The academic programs are challenging and require undergraduate students to take one year of Greek, one year of Hebrew, nine hours of theology, two semesters of New Testament survey, two semesters of Old Testament survey, personal evangelism, church history, and an overseas missions practicum.
LUBBOCK?The West Texas city of Lubbock will host the Southern Baptists of Texas Convention as it marks 11 years of ministry during its Bible Conference and annual meeting Oct. 25-27 at the Lubbock Memorial Civic Center.
This year’s theme?”Thirsting for God”?reflects the need for revival in the churches and a spiritual awakening among the lost. The theme Bible passage is Isaiah 44:3a: “For I will pour water on him who is thirsty, and floods on the dry ground.”
The Bible Conference, which precedes the annual meeting, will include speakers such as Tim LaHaye, Herb Reavis Jr. and David Allen. Noted Christian singer Sheila Walsh will speak during a Monday women’s luncheon. SBC President Johnny Hunt and Team Impact will close the meeting Tuesday night with evangelistic rallies in two separate venues at the Civic Center.
SBTC Executive Director Jim Richards commented: “As usual the Southern Baptists of Texas Convention will have singing, praying, preaching and a little business on the side during our annual meeting. This year we are planning something special. While ‘Crossover’ has become a regular event, this is the first time to have an evangelistic outreach during the closing convention session. Tuesday night, Oct. 27, could be an unprecedented ingathering of people into the kingdom of God at a state convention annual meeting. Attend if you can. Bring someone who needs Jesus on Tuesday night. Above all please pray for people to come to Jesus.”
CROSSOVER
Prior to the convening of the convention on Monday night, Oct. 26, the week’s events include the “Crossover Lubbock” evangelistic outreach. This year’s effort will culminate during the closing session of the convention and will feature Team Impact, Southern Baptist Convention President Johnny Hunt, and a citywide crusade night.
Jack Harris, SBTC ministry associate for personal and event evangelism, said Team Impact will be presenting their feats of strength and talking about positive values in Lubbock-area schools Oct. 22-23 and Oct. 26-27, culminating with a crusade event at 7 p.m. Oct. 27 at the Lubbock Convention Center exhibit hall. Simultaneously, Hunt will be preaching an evangelistic message in the convention center theater. Harris said the two events will appeal to different audiences, but he hopes to involve as many Southern Baptists in the Lubbock area as possible to bring unbelieving friends.
Also, Crossover will include some door-to-door outreach and Team Impact ticket distribution before the Texas Tech-Texas A&M football game.
Visit sbtexas.com/evangelism for updated information on Crossover.
OTHER EVENTS
?The SBTC President’s Luncheon with noted author and preacher Tim LaHaye, scheduled from 11:30 a.m.-1 p.m. Tuesday, Oct. 27 in the Banquet Hall of the Civic Center. Cost is $10. Registration is available at sbtexas.com/am09/prez.htm.
?The SBTC Women’s Luncheon with singer and former “700 Club” co-host Sheila Walsh, scheduled 11:30 a.m.-1 p.m. Monday, Oct. 26 in the Banquet Hall. Cost is $10. Registration is available at sbtexas.com/am09/women.htm.
?A Concerned Women for America dinner with Beverly LaHaye from 4:45-6 p.m. Monday, Oct. 26 in the Banquet Hall. Complimentary registration is available at sbtexas.com/am09/events.htm#beverly.
?The Ezekiel Project, an effort of the SBTC to help plateaued or declining churches regain health, will host a testimonial banquet from 4:45-6 p.m. Monday, Oct. 26 in the Banquet Hall. Those interested in this may purchase tickets from Jim Wolfe at 817-552-2500 or e-mail him at jwolfe@sbtexas.com.
?The “Late Nite” event following the Monday session of the Bible Conference is back this year. See the Church Ministries booth at the convention center for more information.
HOMESCHOOL FAMILIES
Room 106 at the Civic Center will be reserved for homeschool families during the meeting on Oct. 26-27. There will also be an optional field trip. Families utilizing the study hall space must have at least one parent present with any children. For more information or questions, contact Tammi
NASHVILLE, Tenn.–The Southern Baptist leader who pledged from the start to “speak the truth in love” has announced his retirement effective Sept. 30, 2010, when he completes 18 years as president and CEO of the SBC’s Executive Committee. A former Wichita Falls pastor, Morris Chapman, 68, was elected to lead the convention’s administrative arm in 1992, four days after completing his second term as SBC president.
Chapman made his announcement in a letter he read to Executive Committee members, gathered in Nashville on Sept. 20-21 for their fall meeting.
During his tenure, Chapman has presided over the Executive Committee with the added role of chief executive officer. The convention operating budget grew from $4.2 million to $9.4 million. The ministry assignment grew as well to include CP promotion, stewardship and the Southern Baptist Foundation.
Chapman also enlisted the help of prominent Southern Baptists to work under the auspices of the Executive Committee to champion efforts in global evangelical relations and “Empowering Kingdom Growth.”
Veering from a dry statistical account of the year’s activities, Chapman passionately delivered his reports to the annual SBC meetings, leaving no doubt where he stood on theological issues or methodological practices in the denomination. Most recently, he asked whether calls for a “Great Commission Resurgence” offered a clear objective and transparent process for achieving its objective.
Chapman told EC members he had sought to address issues about which Southern Baptists were expressing great concerns. “My reporting was visionary in which I made an urgent and impassioned appeal from God’s holy Word. The pastor and preacher in me seemed never to be far removed from my reports. Most of the time I was able to hold my passion in preaching in check,” Chapman added.
Praising the vision God gave Southern Baptists to launch the Cooperative Program (CP) in 1925, Chapman said the idea saved the convention from financial ruin, kept missionaries on the field and seminary students in the classroom. “If it were ever tossed aside to be replaced by strong promotion of societal giving through designated funds, or if both undesignated and designated funds were counted as CP, we will have abandoned the greatest vehicle for supporting missions in the history of Christendom,” he insisted.
“Morris Chapman has been influential in Southern Baptist life for the last 30 years,” SBTC Executive Director Jim Richards told the TEXAN. “His election as president of the convention in 1990 finalized the effort to redirect the SBC toward a more conservative theological perspective. He deserves our gratitude for his strong stand on the Word of God and his contributions in denominational life.”
Chapman noted in his letter of resignation, “I reserve my greatest thanks to God. His grace has been sufficient and He has supplied all my ‘need according to His riches in glory by Christ Jesus’ (Phil. 4:19). Every direction I have led and decision I have made, the uppermost question in my mind has been, ‘What is in the best interest of the entire Southern Baptist Convention and its Executive Committee.’ My prayer is that God will bless and lead the Executive Committee in its every deliberation and decision in the coming months and years. I pledge my prayers and encouragement to you and to the one who shall succeed me.”
At the time of Chapman’s election in 1992, the denominational bureaucracy was beginning to feel the impact of the conservative resurgence as trustee boards looked for opportunities to elect entity heads who shared their theological convictions.
“I see myself as carrying out the will of the majority and carrying out genuine healing among Southern Baptists,” Chapman told the trustees who elected him without dissent to succeed Harold C. Bennett.
He left a 13-year pastorate at First Baptist Church of Wichita Falls to become the fifth president of the entity charged with conducting business for the SBC between annual sessions. Other pastoral experiences placed him in the Texas towns of Rogers and Waco, as well as Albuquerque, N.M.
EC Chairman Randall James of Florida waited until the close of the recent meeting to announce the search committee tasked with finding Chapman’s replacement. Joining James are EC members Martha Lawley, a member of First Southern Baptist Church in Worland, Wyo., an author and recent speaker at SBTC women’s ministry retreats, Clarence J. Cooper, pastor of Brandon (Miss.) Baptist Church, David O. Dykes, pastor of Green Acres Baptist Church in Tyler which is uniquely affiliated with the Baptist General Convention of Texas, Doug Melton, pastor of Southern Hills Baptist Church in Oklahoma City, Jay R. Shell, an attorney from Batesville, Ark., and member of West Baptist Church, and Danny S. Sinquefield, pastor of Faith Baptist Church in Bartlett, Tenn.
James said he hopes the committee will be able to present a nominee by next June’s SBC annual meeting in Orlando, Fla. Names submitted to the committee will be held in “the strictest of confidence,” James said, requesting that potential candidates’ names be submitted by Dec. 1.
James said the names of nominees for president of the Executive Committee can be addressed to Presidential Search Committee c/o SBC Executive Committee, 901 Commerce St., Nashville, TN 37203, or to him at First Baptist Church, 3000 S. John Young Pkwy., Orlando, FL 32805.
Noting the coinciding of leadership transitions at three SBC entities, James said, “I think it’s the most important time right now in Southern Baptist life. I’m asking each of you to pray that God will direct our steps, that he will guide and guard our tongues, and that everything we do and say will bring honor to the Lord Jesus Christ.
“The world will be watching us,” James said. “We have an opportunity to let the world see Jesus through how we carry out our business as the Southern Baptist Convention.”
Chapman told EC members he would devote his final year to promoting a prayer initiative to support the Great Commission Resurgence, calling on Baptists to each pray by name for one person to be saved. Identified as an early proponent of the annual Crossover evangelistic outreach in convention cities that began when he served as SBC president, Chapman told Baptist Press that Southern Baptists seemed to have lost their passion for personal evangelism.
Imagine, Chapman said, if every church in the Southern Baptist Convention adopted a commitment to pray, “’Just one more soul, dear Lord. Just one more soul,’ we would see an increase of 45,000 baptisms next year, moving us from 341,000 to almost 400,000.”
GRAPEVINE?The Southern Baptists of Texas Convention will host a training conference on teaching techniques for ESL teachers and coordinators from noon ? 5 p.m. on Saturday, Oct. 10.
The training conference is free of charge but requires preregistration online at http://sbtexas.com/missions/ESL.htm. It will be held at the SBTC offices, 4500 State Highway 360, Grapevine, Texas 76051.
“This training is designed to help ESL teachers in your church to teach creatively, to impact lives, but most importantly to share the gospel with their students,” said Christina Clark of the SBTC missions team.
Speaker for the event is Carolyn Vincent. The event is made possible through giving to the Cooperative Program.
LAKE POINTE CHURCH IS HOSTING “Unleashing the Power, A Conference for Mobilizing Your Church Through Prayer and Missions” on October 28, 2009. Lead Pastor Steve Stroope and Executive Pastor Carter Shotwell are the keynote speakers. Attendees will have an opportunity to experience an Interactive Prayer Room, Mission Fair with over 50 display booths and a small group leadership event. The cost is $39 on or before October 1, 2009 or $49 thereafter. For additional information visit: www.lakepointe.org.
IMPROVE FUND RAISERS BY USING A PROFESSIONAL AUCTIONEER. Paul Robertson offers his services on a love offering basis. 817-313-1275 or texascountryauctionaeer@gmail.com, www.paulrobertsonauctionservices.com.
FORMER SBC PASTOR OF HISPANIC CHURCH AVAILABLE FOR SUPPLY PREACHING ENGLISH/SPANISH within 50 mile radius of Austin.Conservative,references available,love offering or whatever you think best. Jim Phillips, chago244@quiktx.com.Also check out my website:www.renovationministries.org.
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NEED A WEBSITE FOR YOUR CHURCH? Torncurtain Interactive offers custom design tailored to your needs starting at $9.95/month! References from Baptist Ministers available upon request. Contact David. (409) 622-2197 or visit www.torncurtian.com.
FOR SALE: church in Midlothian, TX has a Baby Grand Piano, small upright piano, hand bells 4 octaves; choral music library, Please call Cindy at 972-723-8920.
AVAILABLE IN LATE OCTOBER OR EARLY NOVEMBER 18 FT CHURCH PEWS. Must arrange transportation and labor to retrieve. Make best offer. Belmont Baptist Church, 1200 W. 8th St. Odessa, Texas. Contact John McLemore at 432-332-0248.
CHRISTIAN PUBLISHER NEEDS PHONE SALES REPS FOR CHURCH DIVISION. Sampson Resources is looking for top talent for our church division selling Christian multimedia curriculum. 2K per month plus bonuses/commission. Earn 30K-50K per year. Located in North Dallas. Call 972-387-2806 ext 221 or send resume to employment@sampsonresources.com.
LifeWay Español, in our continuing desire to better serve the churches of Texas, is seeking a Resident Consultant. The person we are looking for will meet the following criteria:
Sales experience, preferably with Christian bookstores and distributors
Familiar with Evangelical church culture, with the ability to relate well to pastors anddenominational leaders
As a Christian evangelical, well-known researcher George Barna believes “obedience to Jesus Christ is the ultimate solution to all of humankind’s problems.” And yet, he argues in his new book “The Seven Faith Tribes,” that aggressive evangelization of the nation’s majority “tribe” is not the solution to returning America to greatness.
“Should the masses embrace Jesus as their Savior, the nature of our culture could be radically transformed?but as our past experience has shown, having tens of millions simply accept Christ and then live in ways that do not reflect the values Jesus taught gains us little ground,” he explains.
Instead, he helps readers understand the seven dominant faith tribes of the United States in order to show that many of the answers to America’s problems relate to rebuilding a sense of “shared moral values and community.” Barna believes Christians collaborate with non-Christians in order to solve a variety of societal problems, including an unstable economy, strained global relationships, compromised national security, ineffective public education and the redefinition of marriage.
After making a case that America is on a path to self-destruction, Barna explains how the faith of Americans can be categorized into a series of segments he refers to as the seven tribes. He provides an overview of each faith group, noting the values that unite them, subtitling the report to offer research on “who they are, what they believe and why they matter.”
‘CASUAL CHRISTIANS’
Not only is the book helpful in understanding how to work with fellow Americans from a variety of faith tribes to achieve common goals, it provides an honest recognition that the largest faith tribe?Casual Christians?may contribute the majority of members within a typical Southern Baptist congregation. Recognizing just how casually they regard their faith is eye-opening.
“As their name implies, casual Christians are rather laid-back about their faith practices,” Barna writes. “Most of them have one or two religious behaviors that they strive to practice consistently,” he says, referring to prayer, church service attendance and Bible reading, but fewer than 18 percent regularly engage in all three.
“Rather than allowing the Christian faith to shape their minds and hearts, they have chosen to fit Christianity within the box they have created for it. The outcome is a warm, fuzzy feeling about their faith of choice because it has been redefined according to their needs.”
Therefore, Casual Christians are not necessarily the group from which to draw support for pursuing a different moral course in America.
“Despite their stated discomfort with the current moral condition and direction of the nation, their proposed solution is for people to adopt greater tolerance,” he explains, noting that they are more likely to emphasize liberty and happiness.
‘CAPTIVE CHRISTIANS’
While Casual Christians account for 80 percent of Americans who self-identify as Christians, the second tribe, which Barna calls Captive Christians, accounts for just 16 percent of the total adult population. “Captive Christians do not just talk the game, they walk it,” he explains. He credits them with being the tribe that most closely tries to understand and follow biblical teachings, regarding the Bible as their handbook for life.
THE OTHER FIVE
The additional chapters addressing the other five tribes are particularly helpful in understanding the beliefs and practices of other faith groups. Barna guides readers to understand the extensive redefinition of Judaism in an American context and its enormous influence despite its small number of adherents. Mormons are the focus of another chapter, representing the only major faith group that was birthed in the
HOUSTON?No other city in Texas is growing faster than Houston. According to the U.S. census, it added 33,063 residents last year. Noticing the change in his own city, one people group missionary approached SBTC Missions Director Terry Coy about the convention’s people group strategy.
“What really captured my interest in it was one too many mission trips,” the missionary said. “Visiting with our International Mission Board missionaries overseas and seeing strategies they were using, I strongly felt like that was greatly needed in Texas. We are living on a mission field.”
“We have around 120,000-130,000 Hindu people in the greater Houston area with very few churches, missionaries, or organizations that are engaging this overarching people group,” said the missionary, who is not named in this story because of security concerns among his assigned people group. “But inside that large umbrella of Hindu, made up of several people groups, the most open group?the best soil we have found?is with refugees.”
Relocated to major Texas cities by the United Nations, there are more than 500 of this distinct people group in Houston, 500 in Dallas, and 300 in Austin. After concentrating on this ethnic group for two years, the missionary has organized 17 groups that meet to hear Bible stories, called “storying groups.”
The UN has plans to relocate another 5,000 of this people group in the next three years to Houston and Dallas each, and another 3,000 to Austin, the missionary said.
“The only way to keep up with growth is for groups we are starting right now to reproduce,” he added. “There is no way the three of us doing storying can reach that many people.”
The first story groups are beginning to reproduce, the missionary said, calling the new groups the “second generation.”
The missionary explained that the strategy to reach a specific people group starts by meeting needs and making relationships. As new believers are discipled, they learn to disciple others.
“By prayer-walking and networking through agencies that are working with refugees, we were able to discover this pocket of refugees that lived in several apartments,” the missionary explained. “We began prayer-walking those complexes and partnering with refugee agencies to meet needs and build relationships to provide furniture, clothes, picking them up from the airport when they arrive and helping them get settled in apartments.”
We teach them what a thermostat is; most of them had never seen one before. Teach them how to use an oven and a microwave. Teach them how to drive so that they can get a license and a job. We are talking about basic needs, and through meeting those needs that we’ve formed relationships and have found persons of peace”?those friendly toward dialoguing about the faith.
The missionary said persons of peace are found and are invited to hear stories from the Bible.
“For those who are open, we schedule a time to come to their apartment and encourage them to invite friends and families and we do the first story?the creation account,” he said. “And those who are interested, we do 30 stories?one story a week with them?basically explaining the story of God from creation to Christ.”
Because most of them have never heard these stories before, the missionary said their reactions are often extreme.
A new book recently released by Kregel Publications seeks to dispel evangelical fear of contemporary secular culture in America by outlining a biblical strategy for crossing barriers between the two groups and offering the healing hope of the gospel to the lost.
Matthew Raley, senior pastor of the Orland Evangelical Free Church in northern California, is the author of “The Diversity Culture: Creating Conversations of Faith with Buddhist Baristas, Agnostic Students, Aging Hippies, Political Activists, and Everyone in Between.”
In his book, Raley implores believers to follow the biblical example of Christ by stepping out of their “evangelical bubble,” ignoring stereotypes, and creating relationships with individuals who ascribe to the “diversity culture”?the dominant secular worldview in America characterized by “openness toward all beliefs and spiritual traditions.” This rapidly growing American ethic is described as eastern, urban, new age, and liberated.
“Evangelicals have spent decades in a cultural bubble, trying both to communicate with the outside and to make the inside safer,” Raley writes. “For decades they have seen the outside culture is headed for disaster. But the worse the outside culture has become, the more evangelicals have patched their bubble. Rather than interact meaningfully with people, rather than listen in depth to their painful experiences, evangelicals have continued to transmit ever more irrelevant messages from within their hermetically sealed environment.”
Written for ministers and laypeople alike, Raley purposed to write his book as much for healing a hurting world with the gospel as to mobilize the church to action.
“I constantly analyze how to minister to people across the boundaries of politics and status,” the author writes in his introduction to the book. “I have to. If I do not find ways to cross the boundaries, I worry that in twenty years my church won’t exist.”
To help evangelicals understand the rapidly growing secular culture, Raley outlines four barriers between evangelicals and the diversity culture taken directly from the New York Times “Most E-mailed” list of articles from 2006-2008. These barriers include:
?Stories and stereotypes repeated in the media;
?Mixed signals projected by evangelicals and the diversity culture;
?Attitudes of ‘street postmodernism’ employed by the diversity culture;
?Inability of evangelicals to engage the secular world effectively.
Raley also uses the Samaritan-Jewish impasse recorded in the Gospel of John as a paradigm for understanding similar tension between evangelicals and the diversity culture. Each chapter includes a commentary on John 4 and practical guidelines for imitating Christ’s communication methods as a way to heal broken relationships and share the good news.
But the book also offers a theology for healing hostilities with the gospel and four practical guidelines for demonstrating Christ to a skeptical, secular world.
“As long as [the diversity culture thinks] of Christian spirituality in terms of the group they know as evangelicals, they will not follow Christ,” Raley writes. “But if you show them the power of the risen Jesus in your testimony, the freedom you have found through the Scriptures, and the love you have stirred in members of Christ’s family?I think unbelievers will see the gospel for the first time.”
For more information about the book or to read Raley’s blog, visit tritoneline.com.
LAREDO?Five weeks into his task in Laredo, Chuy Avila?a church-planting strategist sponsored by the SBTC and NAMB?didn’t characterize his ministry as difficult.
“I think it will be easy because I can feel the Lord’s hands around Laredo,” Avila said. “Not because I’m here, but because the people here are open and friendly and willing to hear the gospel. I can feel the Lord is working in their lives and families and in the city.”
Avila has spent more than 17 years in such ministry, having served as a church-planting strategist for Hispanic work at the Tennessee Baptist Convention for the last decade. He has prior experience with Midland Baptist Association and served on NAMB’s Hispanic Task Force.
Avila’s work in Laredo, whose populace is 95 percent Hispanic, is part of an SBTC/NAMB joint venture called Project Borderlands Reach, the purpose of which is to systematically saturate Laredo as one of many under-evangelized and under-churched borderlands regions with the gospel. The three-year strategy includes an evangelistic ministry focus on planting multiple healthy churches that will replicate themselves.
Having researched local demographics, Avila said the city of about a quarter-million people are segmented linguistically as follows: 20 percent of first-generation Hispanics speaks Spanish only, 60 percent represent the second generation which is bi-lingual, and the remaining 20 percent are the English-only third generation.
Avila said the Spanish-language churches aren’t reaching the second and third generations as well as the first. Add to that the average age of Baptist pastors in the area?65, according to Avila?and the mission field is indeed ripe unto harvest, he said.
“There is a gap in the reality of the community and the age of most ministers here.” That troubles Avila because there are multiplied thousands of young families and singles that he meets every day who are walking, jogging and driving around in Laredo, who are not yet reached with the gospel.
“My priority goal is to reach the second and third generations,” he added, saying there is a need to plant churches to help reach them. There are only 13 Baptist churches in Laredo, Avila said. That’s about one evangelical church for every 3,800 people.
“We don’t want to import church planters from other states,” he said. “I need to discover younger people right here who are willing to be discipled and trained, and then mentor them to start churches. This is my biggest need?to raise up younger pastors to reach the younger generations living in Laredo. My prayer is that the Lord will raise them up from our own backyard.”
One of Avila’s strategies includes mission service projects to assist the local school system maintain its facilities. He prays for groups of Baptists to come to Laredo to help paint public school buildings.
“This will help us build a good relationship with school officials, and will help us to start Bible studies in school facilities,” he said. Avila wants to start two bi-lingual churches as soon as possible.
Avila also prays for those who would come to Laredo for prayer-walking, religious surveys, Vacation Bible Schools, and who could help in other strategic ministries.
Recognizing that Southern Baptists in Texas are already supporting such ministry through the Cooperative Program, Avila reflected upon the role CP giving played in his own conversio
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