Church planters seeing fruit in hard labor

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April 9, 2006
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BURLESON?Why are new churches popping up everywhere here in the Bible Belt, where a person couldn’t throw a decent-sized rock without hitting a church of some kind?

Scott Beebe, pastor of a new church plant in Burleson called LifePointe, said the reason is simple: “The only reason we started our church was because the 100 other churches down here are not full.”

Burleson is a growing community south of Fort Worth. Beebe said his research showed him that Burleson was 70 to 80 percent unchurched. So in January 2005, Beebe accepted the call and started this new work.

In another community on the other side of the Dallas-Fort Worth area, Steve Burrell is beginning a new church plant called The Journey. Burrell began his work in May of 2005 by knocking on doors and doing surveys in the Collin County community of Frisco?one of the nation’s fast1:PersonName w:st=”on”>test-growing cities.

Starting a new church is not an easy job, both pastors confessed, but there are victories along the way, they agreed.

Burrell said he is seeing God open doors in a way only God can. His church has been able to reach out to families of other faiths that might not come to a traditional church building.

“I believe God is the giver of honor,” Burrell said, “that if someone connects relationally with you (as a church), that God does that work.”

Beebe said it is a privilege seeing people come to Christ. He has seen husbands read the Bible for the first time and people who were calloused broken by God’s grace.

“I don’t just rejoice in the people who accept Christ for the first time and begin to follow him, but I also rejoice in the people who are spiritually far from him, even though they believe in him, but they were not following him actively, begin to follow him.”

Burrell said his definition of a Christ-follower is a person who is “learning who Christ is and doing what he says.”

Both churches are about a year old. Burrell said his church has about 25-30 people at services every weekend. Beebe’s congregation has grown a little faster with 120 people attending.

Local churches, the TEAM Church network, and the Southern Baptists of Texas Convention assist in helping the church plants grow. Some of this help comes in the form of money, people, coaching and networking.

Burrell said one of his biggest challenges has been wanting to skip to the end and not going through the process patiently.

“I want to be self-sustaining ? a thriving church. But in order to get there, there has to be this tight relationship-building.” And that has to come first. He said it’s harder casting the vision of the church one-on-one versus sharing the vision with an entire congregation.

Burrell said one difficulty he experiences is learning what to say and how to say it to a person who has never heard the gospel or who is a new Christian with no church background. For example, he said it takes some work to relate the concept of tithing to a person with little or no church background.

“I usually spend about 10 percent of my time in preparation in front of a dictionary because I’m having to break down some pretty religious terms into terminology that normal people understand,” Burrell said.

Both pastors said they are reaching people by becoming a part of their communities. They knock on doors. They host block parties and Christmas parties. They meet people where they are.

Burrell said his church also recently hosted a series of parenting seminars to help reach a community that has a lot of young families moving in.

“We felt that because Frisco was so family oriented, we would do something to benefit families and by doing that we would create a crowd,” Burrell said.

The Journey had about 80 families sign up for the “Parenting Empowering Seminars.” Many of those families are returning to other seminars and small groups.

Burrell and Beebe agree that part of their success will be in connecting these people with smaller groups.

Burrell said his follow-up plan to the parenting seminars includes inviting people that come back to continue to grow their parenting skills in small groups within the church.

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