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When Forest Cove Baptist Church wanted to plant a church in the developing Northeast Houston area, the number of volunteers showed the church’s passion to reach the unchurched of that location. Nathan Lino, leading a team of 118, began Northeast Houston Baptist Church last summer, and God has blessed the church all along the way.
Lino was born in South Africa and moved to Kingwood, Texas, at the age of 11. The son of a pastor, Lino first heard God’s call to ministry in seventh grade, but resisted because of all the hardships he knew pastors face on a regular basis. However, Lino finally accepted God’s design on his life in his sophomore year at Texas A&M University. After graduating last year with a degree in speech communications, he enrolled at Southeastern Baptist Theological Seminary and planned to pastor a church.
However, Lino and his wife, Nicole, found difficulty in locating a church. “We were getting nervous at the end,” he remembers, “because it was April and the Lord had said, ‘No,’ about several established churches.”
Lino would not be joining an established church, however. In May, the search committee of Forest Cove Baptist Church decided to call Lino to lead a new church start in Atascocita, in the northeast portion of the Houston Metro area. After planning and organizing the church for a couple of months, Lino and his team held the first service of Northeast Houston Baptist Church on September 8 with about 300 people in attendance.
From the beginning, NEHBC organized its ministry in a unique way. Instead of utilizing paid staff to perform the ministries, the church relies on volunteers and employs only Lino and a secretary, despite growing to a regular attendance of about 430 per week. The entire ministry of the church takes place through ministry teams. The pastor compares this delegation of service to the equipping of the saints for ministry as described in Ephesians 4:12.
“I put a lot of faith in my team leaders,” Lino says. “They put in a lot of hours and go above and beyond the call of duty.”
NEHBC centers its entire ministry around three pillars: Prayer, Bible Teaching, and Evangelism. As new ministries are started at the church, each must revolve around those aims.
To accomplish this first of the church’s “pillars,” the congregation holds a prayer meeting on Sunday nights and receives prayer requests throughout the week via the church’s web site. Requests may be viewed online at the moment they are received, allowing the church to constantly pray for others’ needs and the needs of the church as a whole. Lino gives all the credit for the church’s success to God’s movement in response to prayer. “We just pray and pray and He keeps moving,” says the pastor.
Meanwhile, Lino’s expository preaching is one way in which Bible teaching takes place at the church. Beginning his teaching from the book of Matthew on the church’s first Sunday in September, Lino plans to spend about four years in that gospel. “Our people are eating that up,” he says.
Other such teaching on Scripture and doctrinal issues is planned, as well. The church, which resides in an area with a heavy Mormon population, has scheduled a conference on cults for the fall. “Christian Life University” will also begin around that time on Sunday nights. Each class in the “university” will be a one-semester elective, complete with syllabus, that discusses practical issues, such as having a healthy marriage, or in which attendees participate in small group discussion of materials like Experiencing God.
The third “pillar” of Northeast Houston Baptist, evangelism, is accomplished with similar gusto. Unlike in many areas, the church has found door-to-door visitation to work well in this highly unchurched region filled with young married couples. Over 200 houses are visited each week, and these brief encounters primarily include invitations to the church. However, when the open door of a home leads to an open door for evangelism, visitors take that opportunity, as well. An upcoming “tailgate party” hopes to attract two or three thousand people from the area, some of whom will be shuttled in by buses picking up at nearby grocery stores.
While NEHBC’s new building is certainly large enough to hold a baptistry, the church actually baptizes at the local YMCA. Immediately following the morning service on selected Sundays, members commute a mile or two in order to celebrate recent decisions for Christ. Reserving a corner of the YMCA pool, Pastor Lino may baptize over a dozen individuals in one such outing. “We do that so that we can baptize in front of lost people,” he explains. “Everyone’s in their church clothes so it draws a lot of attention.”
Northeast Houston Baptist looks to the future with the same kind of unique vision. Phase One of the church’s growth plan included the purchase of thirty acres of land and the new building, which opened its doors on Easter Sunday to 760 people. Several more buildings are planned for future years, including the addition of an athletic facility on site.
One department through which the church hopes to draw more of the many local families is the children’s ministry, which presently attracts about 80 children each week. Mrs. Lino led this ministry in its first several months, and the church hopes to acquire a fulltime children’s staff member soon.
For missions, NEHBC has acquired several partnerships to aid its members in experiencing missions firsthand. The locations of these partnering churches are at varying degrees outside of the “comfort zones” of NEHBC’s many previously unchurched individuals. Thus short-term trips are planned for New Hampshire, Mexico, and Estonia. Lino describes this structure as “a stair step program to get people comfortable going from Texas to Southeast Asia,” and area on which the church hopes to concentrate its missions efforts in the future.
While Lino and his team look to the future, they are excited about God’s work in the present, too. “The Lord’s been blessing,” Lino simply says. And he and the staff are dedicated to letting God work no matter what changes might need to come to present agendas. “Nothing we do is set in stone, as far as becoming tradition,” Lino says. “We are willing to do whatever to bring lost people.”
