Even as scorching temperatures bumped 102 degrees in Arizona’s Urban Corridor, Southern Baptists mobilized in Crossover 2011 to bring the Living Water to people throughout the region’s parched deserts.
Some 5.2 million people live and work in the corridor, which stretches from the Phoenix metro area down to Casa Grande and Tucson. 1,131 of those people are new believers in Christ following Crossover.
Crossover, an evangelism event coordinated by the North American Mission Board (NAMB) and local associations and churches that precedes the Southern Baptist Convention’s (SBC) annual meeting, marked its 23rd year.
“Arizona Baptists have truly shown their neighbors the love of Christ in action through Crossover,” said Kevin Ezell, president of NAMB. “This has been a model for how we can show people we care and then tell them why we care. I’m praying all of our churches in the Phoenix and Tucson areas will benefit from Crossover and keep this momentum going long into the future,” he added.
To share the gospel during Crossover, Arizona Baptists used dozens of block parties, a skateboard-a-thon, bottled water distribution, painting and landscaping projects at area schools, community arts and cultural festivals, women-only events and, of course, door-to-door evangelism.
The most creative event had to be the six-hour Skateboard-A-Thon, sponsored by Mountain Ridge Baptist Church, Glendale, Ariz., attended by hundreds of children and parents on Saturday.
A 19-year-old college student and member of Mountain Ridge Baptist, Presleigh Boulos — herself an avid skateboarder — knows skateboard enthusiasts are one of the most unreached groups in any community. So she envisioned a dynamic event that could reach skateboarders with the gospel.
“We had 33 kids go up there and accept Christ,” Boulos said.
In Tucson, four SBC churches in the central part of the city hosted a Crossover community arts festival at Reid Park, with activities for children, live music, food and booths with artisans’ hand-crafted items. By noon, volunteers from Calvary Baptist Church, Rising Star Baptist Church, First Southern Baptist Church and North Swan Baptist Church — along with Intentional Community Evangelism (ICE) teams — had shared the gospel scores of times, leading 12 kids to faith in Christ in Tucson.
That number was on top of the 12 children and five adults who accepted Christ the night before at a Tucson car show — attended by 4,000 — hosted by the same four churches.
In east Tucson, Sabino Road Baptist Church sponsored a landscaping project at a local school and conducted door-to-door witnessing in the area’s neighborhoods, joined by volunteers from Kentucky, North Carolina, Tennessee and Texas.
Back in the Phoenix metro area, one of the earliest Crossover events for women only, was held at the Christian Challenge Building on the campus of Arizona State University at Tempe. ASU has 3,500 international students from 140 countries.
Women from several Asian countries and Kenya spent the session getting free manicures and learning how to make necklaces and scented bath salts. Following a luncheon, they all left with scented candles — and an aroma of the gospel.
And in other news, Hispanics celebrated the 524 professions of faith from the Crossover 2011 evangelistic outreach (at Central High School, Phoenix) — which drew about 600 Hispanics — mostly from the local area but also from other states.
Joshua del Risco, NAMB Hispanic evangelism coordinator, urged participants to continue the evangelistic fiesta in New Orleans at the 2012 SBC annual meeting. He prayed God would “mobilize the people in New Orleans just like it happened in Phoenix: in prayer, in unity and in evangelistic fervor and success.” (Compiled from BP stories)
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