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A squirrel was loose in the building at First Baptist Church in Timpson, so the pastor sent out a notice that he needed a trap to catch it. By the end of the day, a squirrel trap was set and a man he had been praying for was a new brother in Christ.
W. Dee Daniel, the pastor, had led a woman to Jesus last year, and when he asked if she would like to be baptized and join the church, she said she wanted to wait for her husband. Daniel told her he would be praying for her husband’s salvation.
It turns out her husband is a squirrel hunter—the man who showed up to set a trap in response to the pastor’s plea. Before he left, the pastor asked if he’d thought about his spiritual condition. When the man said he had, Daniel asked about his salvation experience.
“I’ve never been saved,” the man replied.
The two sat down to talk, and the pastor asked the man what was keeping him from accepting Christ as Savior.
“I guess I just didn’t know how,” he said.
Daniel led the man to the Lord, and the next week the couple’s teenage son went forward during the invitation and was saved, too. Their daughter followed two weeks later. Earlier this summer, the family of four was baptized in a church member’s swimming pool along with 13 other people.
“From what I can tell by looking back, it’s probably double any other baptismal service they’ve had at the church in the 100-plus years the church has existed,” Daniel said. After the hourlong service, the church family had a picnic and played games to celebrate the baptisms.
Finding momentum
First Baptist Timpson had dwindled to around 65 people on Sunday mornings when Daniel arrived as pastor eight years ago. Most of the congregation was over the age of 65, he said, and the church was in need of revitalization.
“COVID kind of knocked the legs out from under the progress we’d made,” Daniel said.
Timpson is a rural East Texas town of about 1,000 people, and the church is well-known in the area, the pastor said. During his tenure, they’ve tried to focus on reaching younger families, knowing that’s necessary for survival.
Debra Smith, Timpson’s mayor, is a longtime member of First Baptist, having married there in 1977.
“It’s like everything else [in] a community. You have ups and downs and growth spells and spells where it seems like things are slowing down, but we have definitely been in a very upbeat, positive swing at the church,” Smith said.
On Wednesday nights, First Baptist offers a meal followed by Bible studies for children, students, and adults. For a low-to-moderate income community, “it’s a helpful thing to get their kids fed and churched,” Smith said.
About 50 children and students attend on Wednesday nights, the pastor said, compared to a sprinkling of children in years past. On Sundays, total attendance has doubled, averaging 120 to 130. “A lot of our growth has come in younger families,” Daniel said.
“They [younger families] need to feel a personal connection, and by discipling them relationally, it allows them to feel a part of something bigger than them.”
It’s about relationships
One of the greatest breakdowns churches experience in passing faith from one generation to the next comes from a lack of relational discipleship, the pastor said.
“What I mean by that is more than programs, more than meeting times, but true discipleship of following Christ, which leads to more than Sunday morning or Wednesday [engagement],” Daniel said. “I think that’s one of the things we see in reaching these younger families. They haven’t been used to that. They haven’t seen it.”
Relational discipleship helps people connect with specific church members, not just to the church as a whole, the pastor said. Younger generations value such belonging, he added.
“They want to feel like what they’re doing is making a difference. The older generation financially was strong. They would put a lot of money into programs. But for the younger generation, it’s more than money,” Daniel said.
“They need to feel a personal connection, and by discipling them relationally, it allows them to feel a part of something bigger than them.”
Such relational discipleship needs to extend to involving children in ways that could keep them involved during the post-high school years when they typically stray from church, Daniel said.
“If we connect them, they have the stronger connection while they’re in church and while they’re younger so when they graduate or go to college, they still have a strong connection that draws them back,” he said. “They’re not gone for 10 to 12 years.”
One way First Baptist involves younger people is through a food bank ministry that began at the church and has since grown to its own community nonprofit housed across the parking lot from the main building.
“We generally give boxes to about 120 families on the third Friday each month, and I don’t know what I’d do without the volunteers from the church coming and helping get the boxes out,” Smith said. “Our church is very involved in the community.”
First Baptist also sends mission teams to Belize, giving church members an opportunity to be personally invested in taking the gospel to the ends of the earth.
“If you don’t have young families with kids coming to your church, your church is going to be on a decline,” Smith said. “ … If we’re getting older and not having that kind of fruit, having children, eventually the pews will get emptier and emptier.”
