Guest Editorial — Alabama Baptists Still Committed to Evangelism

By Sammy Gilbreath

Director of evangelism, Alabama Baptist State Board of Missions

This has been an incredible year for evangelism in Alabama. Baptisms are up, the breakout sessions at the State Evangelism Conference were packed and Across Alabama is off the charts.

I had the wonderful privilege of serving on the writing team for the national God’s Plan for Sharing (GPS) effort.

I brought this information back to the evangelism office at Alabama Baptist State Board of Missions (SBOM) and shared that this would be our office agenda for the next 10 years. There were some obvious concerns quickly after hearing about GPS, but Rick Lance, executive director of the SBOM, declared this would be “the decade to make a difference.”

Without apology, he said, “This is going to be our strategy.” And thus GPS: Across Alabama was born.

Weeks and months were spent leading awareness/training sessions in each of our 12 districts. Districts, associations and churches were urged to form teams of four to coordinate Across Alabama.

We began to pray and think “what if” we could see the churches order enough material to cover 250,000 residences this first year with 10 years to go. We would then have the platform to reach Alabama by 2020 if that could happen. When the first week of orders came in, our churches ordered material to cover 300,000 residences. That is 50,000 more than we had prayerfully anticipated.

When the deadline to order came and the truck delivered the ordered material to the evangelism office, there was material to cover more than 1 million residences. This will be the greatest combined effort to reach Alabama with the gospel in my lifetime.

This effort is simple, inexpensive and doable by any church. Also everyone in the church, regardless of age, can participate.

There is still time for any church to participate in the prayer walk/drive March 20 and the gospel distribution March 27 or later if they choose. The evangelism office staff will furnish the mapping center material free for any area that a church chooses to cover. All we will need is the zip codes for that area. That can be ordered by sending an e-mail to anelson@alsbom.org.

We also ordered extra material just in case a church adopted this ministry late. The church can place that order as well to the same e-mail and just tell us how many residences it wants to cover.

The door hanger bag and the gospel drop-in total cost are 6 cents per residence. We will bill the church later, so there is no upfront cost. If a church decides to cover 1,000 residences, then it will cost $60. Any church can do that.

This could prove to be the spark for the greatest harvest we have ever seen in Alabama. The door hanger, in addition to the gospel drop-in, will have an invitation to attend that local church on Easter, April 4. The pastor/church is urged to have an evangelistic service with an invitation for people to invite Jesus Christ to be their Lord and Savior.

There will be weeks of follow-up, making sure we assimilate these new believers into our churches as well as staying in contact with the visitors from that service.

The television spots in March and April will cover the entire state and urge the viewer to attend a Southern Baptist church in their area. Pictures from the television spots will be on the gospel drop-in placed in the door hanger to ensure there is a connection made between the prayer walk/drive, gospel distribution, TV spots and the invitation to attend the Easter service.

This is going to be a great blessing to this state as well as the local church, association and individual believer involved. We can do this, Alabama Baptists, but what is more important is that we must do this.

Thanks for allowing me to serve you as a state missionary and partner with you to reach Alabama with the gospel.