Lookout Mountain churches blitz area, visit 320 homes on Outreach Saturday

The third Saturday in October — made famous by the annual football matchup between the University of Alabama and the University of Tennessee, so often played on that day — garnered new attention this year in northeast Alabama.
   
October 21 was Outreach Saturday in Lookout Mountain Baptist Association, a daylong, associationwide evangelism event with the motto of “Into more homes than ever … touching lives forever” and a goal of visiting 320 homes — a challenge area Baptists rose to and met. 
   
The member churches were focused on the eternally significant door-to-door drama in their hometowns of Leesburg, Sand Rock, Little River, Blanche, Broomtown, Jamestown, Collinsville and Gaylesville — an area roughly 25 miles long and 10 miles wide with no traffic lights in the unincorporated towns therein. 
   
“In this state, on any given fall Saturday, you’ve got a chance of butting heads with the [Southeastern Conference],” said Lloyd Borden, director of missions (DOM) for Lookout Mountain Association. But neither football nor sleep was an issue, he noted, even though getting up early on a Saturday morning for one or more of the pastors might mean missing the only opportunity for sleeping in that week. Each of the pastors of the association’s 16 churches is bivocational, as is Borden, who, as sales manager for a tractor dealership, tacks 50 hours a week on top of his duties as DOM.
   
Borden, who was preparing for the day at 5:30 that morning, said the pastors gathered at the associational office “out in the middle of the woods” in Blue Pond for an 8 a.m. prayer breakfast at the outset of Outreach Saturday. 
   
After a message from 1 Kings 17 delivered by Chad Brown, pastor of Yellow Creek Baptist Church, Leesburg, the pastors dispersed to their individual churches, each mindful of the challenge set before his respective congregation nearly a year prior. 
  
“We challenged all of our churches to try to make 20 contacts, that would have given us 320 homes in our geographic area of responsibility,” Borden said, claiming two churches made stops at more than 50 locations. 
   
One was Yellow Creek Baptist as seven members of the church went out in three different groups.
   
“We actually went to about 52 houses and made about 30 contacts with people. We were able to present the gospel about 10 times,” Brown reported. 
   
When asked if he was pleased with the results, Brown said yes. 
   
“I think this is a great idea. It’s a great opportunity for us and the association to help not only reach souls for Christ but also to gain a little cooperation,” he said.
   
The idea for the effort originated right there at home — something important, Borden said, because of the confidence that the success of such an endeavor can give to the predominantly small congregations that are Lookout Mountain Association. It is important for a continued sense of purpose and identity, he added. 
   
“See, we have some churches that have less than 10 in Sunday School, and when you have a church of that size, Satan has a way of defeating the minds of those people, telling them they can’t do anything,” Borden said. “But they can do something and we’re just so grateful [Outreach Saturday] turned out like it did. I don’t think there’ll be any problem making it an annual event.”