Churches reach out to students, faculty with ‘school days’

State Baptist churches have reached out to their local schools for years and one way that outreach continues to see great success is by bringing the schools into the churches, according to Pastor Jonathan Powell.
   
As pastor of Bakers Chapel Baptist Church, Guntersville, and band director at Sardis High School in Boaz, Powell is plugged into the missions field known as the Alabama public school system and has a heightened sensitivity to its needs. 
   
To that end, the Marshall Baptist Association church hosted Claysville Junior High Day Nov. 19, the first of what Powell hopes to make an annual event. 
   
“[W]e really felt like it was time to reach out to our school to show that we care about it, we care about the teachers, we care about the students,” he said. 
   
During the service, church members recognized the school’s faculty and staff, academic teams and band members and held special prayer for them. 
   
Powell and company are not alone, not even in Marshall Association. 
   
It is, in fact, from being recognized in similar fashion as a member of the Sardis High faculty by Sardis Baptist Church, Boaz, at such an event three years running that Powell got the idea. 
   
It is a simple approach to Intentional Evangelism, but one that Jonathan Lancaster, youth minister at Sardis Baptist, said works. 
   
This year at Sardis Baptist’s event, a student was saved.
   
“We had a lot of people come into church that night,” Lancaster said. “It’s a student outreach but it’s a community outreach as well.”
   
NorthPark Baptist Church, Trussville, in Birmingham Baptist Association is another example of that message put into practice. 
   
“We’ve done both a Clay-Chalkville and Hewitt-Trussville high school day where we invited the high school football players and the cheerleaders to one of our Sunday morning services, and things really worked well both times,” said NorthPark Baptist’s Minister to High School Students Stephen Hall.
   
But he was careful to add that his job is more than counting heads at events.
   
“Student ministry is more than getting kids to come to your church and witnessing to them; it’s supporting them in every aspect of their life,” Hall said.