Alabama Baptist pastors, laymen seek ministry ideas, take tour

Alabama Baptist pastors, laymen seek ministry ideas, take tour

Forty-nine Alabama Baptist recently took a road trip they won’t soon forget. The group of 23 pastors, 22 laymen, one director of missions and three facilitators piled into a bus and visited nine Alabama Baptist churches throughout the course of three days.

“It was an exciting adventure,” said Edwin Jenkins, who coordinated the event. “It was the equivalent of nine church conferences on church growth in one. We asked everyone to tell us what works for their church and what doesn’t”

At each church the pastor or other staff members talked to the group about their church’s experience with growth.

“Each pastor and staff offered freely of their time, effort and expertise. It was amazing to have such quality teaching in such a concentrated time period,” said Jenkins, director of leadership/church growth for the Alabama Baptist State Board of Missions. “These are churches that are really making a difference and are committed to doing what God wants and are kingdom-oriented churches.”

Pat Andrews, director of missions for Escambia Baptist Association, said he was encouraged to learn tips he could share with churches in his association.

“So many churches are stagnated and are declining,” Andrews said. “They are hungry for ways to improve and do things differently. I enjoyed learning ways to implement these concepts.”

Jenkins said everyone who went on the tour took something away that they could use at their home church.

“We learned so much that it would’ve been worth going even if we had stopped after the first church,” Jenkins said. “It was a bold experiment and we would do it again.”

Jenkins said they visited churches in all types of neighborhoods from the inner city to the suburbs to churches in rural areas. “We tried not to hold up one church as the model, so we went to a variety of churches,” Jenkins said. “Each one is very effective in what it does.”

Can’t get enough

Bill Hand, pastor of First Baptist Church, Lafayette, said the only negative aspect of the tour was that the time spent at each church was too short. “The church tour takes away the excuse for pastors and laymen who say, ‘Wouldn’t it be great to see how other churches are meeting the needs of ministry … but who has the time to go see them?” he said.

Each pastor brought a layman along to have another set of eyes and ears to capture the experience. “It proved to be a good idea as pastors and laymen alternately encouraged and then challenged one another to be alert to what they were hearing,” Jenkins aid.

Jenkins said the tour was a whirlwind but was beneficial to everyone involved. “It was so popular and we received such good response from everyone that we will do it again- hopefully in the fall,” he noted.

For more information, call 1-800-264-1225, Ext. 256 or e-mail ejenkins@alsbom.org.

(TAB)