A pilot church in a new North American Mission Board (NAMB) strategy to partner with mega-churches to establish new Southern Baptist congregations outside the Bible Belt is finding the going slow.
LakePoint Church in the affluent Chicago suburb of Lake Villa, Ill., mad its official launch Easter with about 115 worshipers. Forty were first-time visitors.
The launch follows several months of groundwork, including the mailing of about 70,000 pieces of promotional material and a week-long blitz during which missions volunteers knocked on 16,000 doors.
Pastor Kevin Garber told the Illinois Baptist newspaper that a similar effort in the South would have packed out the school gym where the church is meeting temporarily. But northern Illinois, where about four of every five people are Catholic or Lutheran, is far from a Southern Baptist stronghold.
“I think we got a dose of reality when we saw the turnout,” Garber said. “We know we’ve got a tall order to fill, yet at the same time I know the Lord is in this work.”
Garber said the church, funded with matching grants of $250,000 over two years by NAMB and Jerry Falwell’s Thomas Toad Baptist Church in Lynchburg, Va., hopes to be self-sustaining, which would require between 350 and 400 people, before its funding ends in June 2002.
Four other church starts are being planned on the same model in other cities in the hope they will become flagship congregations in their region. (ABP)
Share with others: