Philadelphia churches sweep city with GPS

Philadelphia churches sweep city with GPS

The rustle of plastic door-hanger bags was a telltale sound of a windy Philadelphia day and evidence that members of Haitian Evangelical Baptist Church visited neighbors along Chelten Avenue with the good news of Jesus Christ.

“They have it in their hands,” said Christian Cesar, pastor of the church. “If they have it in their hands, they are closer to having it in their hearts. That’s why we’re here.”

As part of God’s Plan for Sharing (GPS), the North American Mission Board (NAMB) evangelism initiative, a number of Philadelphia-area churches hosted evangelistic outreach efforts April 4 as a means of reaching their communities and exhibiting the effectiveness of certain outreach media on their communities.

Throughout Philadelphia, more than a dozen churches, from Anglo contemporary and black to Russian, Haitian and Vietnamese congregations, had readied themselves for the outreach.

Paired with a citywide ad campaign that included more than 70 bus ads, mobile truck signs, radio commercials and television spots sending people to FindItHere.com, church members went door to door, hanging bags and striking up conversations.

The Philadelphia initiative was part of a five state roll out of NAMB’s GPS evangelistic strategy, which is now gathering steam after being introduced at last year’s Southern Baptist Convention annual meeting in Indianapolis by NAMB President Geoff Hammond.

“Our churches have, in the last several years, made the weeks leading up to Easter a great opportunity to share the gospel and invite people to church for special Easter celebrations,” said Bob Hylton, director of missions for the Baptist Resource Network of Philadelphia. “What GPS and FindItHere.com offered us is a broader sweeping appeal.”

So while individual members were reaching their neighborhoods, the media campaign was reinforcing the messages.

“We just want people to have God in their hearts because God is the way we have joy and peace,” said Michelle Nguyen, 9, a member of Vietnamese Baptist Church of Philadelphia, who distributed a FindItHere.com brochure and some materials in Vietnamese to a shopper outside the market.

Benjamin Mishin, pastor of Lifeway Baptist Church, a Russian-speaking congregation, said his church’s literature tables caught the eye of hundreds of Russian speakers including many Jews, atheists and nominal Orthodox people of former Soviet bloc countries.

“Many of these people do not even know what the Bible says about anything,” Mishin said. “For me to present them with an alternate view of human existence, to suggest that God created the world in seven days, is to introduce a completely foreign concept. But the lack of knowledge [among those from former communist-bloc countries] gives us an opportunity to teach them about the God who made them and loves them.”

While Philadelphia Baptists made their way from neighbor to neighbor, similar outreach efforts were taking place in Texas, Georgia, Louisiana and California.

“We’re so pleased about these partnerships and to see Southern Baptists out in their neighborhoods meeting people and sharing the good news,” said Ken Weathersby, NAMB’s senior strategist for evangelization. “We will learn much from these efforts, so we can adjust and improve the GPS effort even before it officially begins. But mainly, these efforts are about inviting people to church and sharing the gospel.”

Back on Chelten Avenue in Philadelphia, Cesar and about 20 others left door-hanger bags full of information about their church on more than 1,000 doorknobs. Some members had opportunities to speak with residents and share the gospel in this low-income, ethnically diverse area. Every so often, a car would pull over to receive a bag or a resident would extend a hand out of a doorway and quickly return inside.

Cesar silently prayed as he walked the neighborhoods, adding, “We never know what God will do with the seeds we’ve planted.”    (BP)