Can one missions project in the heart of Montgomery change the entire course of someone’s life? James Taylor would tell you it can.
As a student several years ago, Taylor stepped into the multi-housing communities of Alabama’s capital city as part of Project Hope, an effort by Montgomery Baptist Association to plant multicultural cell churches there.
And when he did, God did something. He sparked in Taylor’s heart a desire to work among the unreached people groups of the inner city — a call so strong that he followed it first in Montgomery but didn’t stop there.
For a year and a half, Taylor and his wife, Hilary, have been planting churches in inner-city Dayton, Ohio.
“There is a lot of sin and hardness of heart in these communities,” he said.
But Taylor is getting through the tough shell and seeing people come to salvation in Christ. Four churches have been started in low-income communities in downtown Dayton since he founded Dayton Hope Ministries under the umbrella of the local Edgewood Baptist Center, a ministry that provides food, clothing and school supplies for the needy.
The vision for Dayton Hope Ministries came from the center’s director, Doug Saunders, who wanted to see Edgewood expand its ministry, said Taylor, who serves as the center’s assistant director.
He got connected with Saunders through Neal Hughes, pilot projects coordinator for the North American Mission Board (NAMB).
Hughes was one of the founders of Project Hope and the former pastor of McGehee Road Baptist Church, Montgomery, in Montgomery Association, where Taylor worked in a summer youth ministry position after graduating from Auburn University.
“We began to discuss [the Taylors’] heart’s desire, and it was obvious the days of missions work with Project Hope had impacted them for life,” Hughes said.
Because Hughes spent much time mentoring Taylor, the philosophy of Dayton Hope Ministries was developed from the strategies of Project Hope, combined with ideas from Mission Arlington, an outreach ministry in Texas, and a study done by NAMB.
“The study showed how churches can go into these housing facilities and … get them to come to church with only a 25 percent success rate,” Taylor said.
“However, if you go into the community and let them take ownership of their faith and their ‘church,’ there is a more than a 70 percent success rate over a few years’ time.”
So that is what Taylor does. He trains members of churches in the Greater Dayton Association of Baptists to go into the housing facilities and begin house churches where the families will not feel out of place and are, therefore, led to Christ.
“We try to equip [the church members] as much as we can to prepare them,” Taylor said.
The church members then spend seven weeks walking around and praying for the community — “The Jericho Seven-Week Prayer Walk” as Taylor calls it.
They pray for the neighbors, and if there are people outside, then they ask for prayer requests.
“This prayer walk builds a small group with which we begin our churches,” he said.
Through this ministry, relationships are formed and the entire congregation of the church initiating the plant is asked to be involved.
Members of the church are asked to use their gifts to help with the house-church plant in the community, whether that be with medical help, education or carpooling.
With all of these gifts and talents being used, Dayton Hope Ministries and Taylor’s work continues.
“God has used [the Taylors] greatly to implement His work in that community,” Hughes said. “He has allowed a multiplication of ministry to take place through James and Hilary Taylor.”
Taylor said God is guiding his work there in a mighty way.
“I continue to see God’s hand in everything that [Hilary and I] do,” he said. (TAB)
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