In North American Mission Board (NAMB) missionary Lamar Duke’s native Alabama, there’s one Southern Baptist church for every 1,452 people.
In the Pittsburgh area, where Duke served the last six years as director of missions for the Baptist Association of Southwestern Pennsylvania, there’s only one Southern Baptist church for every 61,225 people.
Some 3 million live in the association’s nine-county area — so broad that it takes more than three hours to drive it north to south and more than two hours east to west.
“We believe that approximately 2 million of those people are unchurched,” said Duke, adding that this flies in the face of one report calling Pittsburgh the third most religious city in America. “We Baptists, of course, know that what some call ‘religious’ may not always be Christian. There’s a lot of religion here, but there’s not much relationship with Jesus.”
Only 5 percent of the metro Pittsburgh population claims to be evangelical Christians.
With his size, shaved head and southern drawl, Duke is seldom confused as a native Pittsburgher. And since coming as a longtime pastor from Georgia to Pittsburgh in 2002, Duke had to learn about the culture and diversity of Pittsburgh.
Although ranked as the 22nd largest metro area in the United States, Pittsburgh also has a small-town feel — comprised of some 1,600 boroughs, each with its own ethnic and religious traits. Some 140 identifiable ethnic groups call Pittsburgh home.
Before thousands last summer at the 2008 Southern Baptist Convention meeting in Indianapolis, Duke became emotional on stage with NAMB President Geoff Hammond when talking about Pittsburgh’s sad spiritual state.
“The fact that 95 percent of the local population has no recognizable, identifiable relationship with Jesus Christ is what drives me. It gets me out of the bed in the morning and keeps me up at night.
“Our vision here at our association is that we cannot rest until there is a vital, evangelizing, discipling, reproducing church within driving distance of all the 3 million people in the nine counties of southwestern Pennsylvania, and a church where they can worship in their heart language.”
A graduate of the University of Mobile with a bachelor of arts in religion and a master’s degree from New Orleans Baptist Theological Seminary, Duke had been schooled to believe that church planting is the most effective and efficient way to reach those 2 million unchurched people in his association’s area.
“So we’re doing everything we can to salt and seed the area with the gospel,” Duke said. “We believe church planting is the way to do that because the more salvation stations we can create, the more opportunity those people have to hear the gospel.”
Since coming to Pittsburgh six years ago, he’s had a direct or indirect hand in the number of churches in his association increasing from 38 to 71 — probably up to 75 in the near future.
“Our goal is to enable, equip and empower our churches to catch a vision, have the resources and partner and sponsor with other churches to get new church plants off the ground,” he said. “There’s no reason to plant a church if you don’t intend to reach people for Jesus Christ. We’re not planting social clubs here, we’re planting churches. We just want to make it hard to go to hell from Pittsburgh.”
Editor’s Note — Since his selection as a 2009 Week of Prayer missionary, Duke has accepted a new missionary position as state director of missions for the Baptist Convention of New York. (NAMB)
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