Probe identifies unreached people sectors in Alabama

It’s a people group — 2 million strong — of unchurched souls, living in 200 corners of society that don’t have a Baptist church to call their own. Who are they?
   
They’re Alabamians.
   
“There are more than 2 million unchurched in the state, and three-fourths of those are not likely to go into our existing buildings,” said Gary Swafford, director of the Alabama Baptist State Board of Missions (SBOM) office of associational missions and church planting. “It’s time to start new churches with new approaches.”
    That’s what Terry Cutrer, pastor of Moffett Road Baptist Church, Mobile, said his church set out to do when they planted Sonrise Baptist Church in 2003 in an elementary school in the middle of a booming section of Mobile County.
   
“Basically we felt like if we were going to reach Mobile County, we could do a better job of it in two locations than one,” Cutrer said. “We weren’t doing it just to start a church; we were doing it to reach people.”
   
Sonrise Baptist has had its ups and downs in the process of getting started, but “mostly ups,” Cutrer said. “They are doing really well under the leadership of Pastor Ric Camp — they have baptized over 20 in that two years. The church (Moffett Road Baptist) is really excited about it.”
   
So excited, in fact, that they’re planting a second church soon in a different section of the county. It’s still in the developmental stages, but Cutrer said a tentative startup date is set in March 2006.
   
“What Moffett Road has got going is the best model in the state for church planting,” said Sammy Gilbreath, SBOM director of evangelism. “It’s a perfect example of taking personal evangelism to the next level — corporate church evangelism. 
   
“I think it is wonderful because there are all kinds of places in Alabama where we could start new churches like this to reach people not reached by existing churches,” Gilbreath said.
   
Swafford said when a church begins planning to sponsor a church plant, they are intentionally focusing on “who are the lost in our community not likely to come to church?”
   
“There are nine segments of society, or sociological divisions, and any given church only has a couple of them usually,” he said. “If the local church is going to reach people in the other segments who are either different sociologically or simply of a different language, race or style, they need to start new churches.”
   
So how does a church begin planning a new church start? “It begins with a church planting probe, a site locator suvey we do with all of our associations,” Swafford said.
   
A probe, he explained, heightens awareness and helps associational leaders enlist churches to sponsor church plants. It does so by discovering groups of unchurched people and ministry opportunities being missed by present outreach efforts.
   
The probe includes a “windshield survey,” much like the one done in Mobile before Sonrise was planted and again to help Moffett Road identify their newest site.
   
During a windshield survey, an association is divided up into segments, and a team of volunteers led by a probe-trained specialist drives around the community to evaluate the area. Team members take notes on factors such as the ages and types of housing, the presence of schools and other churches and neighborhood trends, Swafford said.
   
Once the probe is complete, its findings are organized into usable information and distributed to interested churches.
   
“We recommend an association to do one once every three to five years. In Mobile Association, we found 30 places of interest, and when we did the total survey for the state, there was at least one place in every county — basically every association — that needed a church or a ministry site,” Swafford said. “There is a need; it’s just a matter of defining that need.”
   
Once the need is defined, he said the seven steps to planting a church are to receive a vision from God, enlist a church-planting team, secure a place to meet, locate receptive people, evangelize nonbelievers, create a core group and launch the new congregation.
   
“Once he (Cutrer) and his church selected a site and his church agreed to sponsor (a church plant) with their leadership and money, they looked for a church planter,” he said. “He (Pastor Ric Camp) came technically on the staff of Moffett Road Baptist Church with the assignment to plant the new church.
   
“The core group was formed, meetings started, there were people saved, the number grew and they purchased property to build — all with the support of Moffett Road’s people. It’s that working together that we value — it provides the strongest base and a friendly environment to work in.”
   
Swafford said once a church has been planted, the sponsoring church’s responsibility is the three “p’s” — pray, play and pay.
  
“They’ll need prayer, missions involvement and financial support, and we seek churches who will be partners for three to five years with the new church start,” he said.
   
But the benefits are wonderful, he added. “It follows the New Testament way of spreading the gospel — Kingdom growth.”
   
For more information on church planting, call Swafford at 1-800-264-1225, Ext. 323.