November 2016 Spare Change
This month I wanted to remind you to pray for the Hispanic church plant. They are called Iglesia Bautista Rios de Agua Viva, which is translated Rivers of the Living Water Baptist Church. Mid-October they had a kick-off weekend and have started regular services. Starting a Hispanic church can be a difficult task, so please pray for the church planters who are still very new to the area. Pray that they can make connections with people in the tristate area that will join them in starting this church. Also, pray that God would use the church plant to reach people for Christ that an
English-speaking church may not be able to reach.
Church planting is an important part of Baptist history. In fact, Oakhill Baptist Church was planted by sister churches in the area fifty-three years ago. This tradition goes all the way back to the Apostles who planted churches to spread the gospel and build the kingdom of God. It is important for us to carry on this tradition for those same reasons. In addition to planting, our church has long been a partner in giving to plant churches. Each year we contribute tens of thousands of dollars to missions. Last year alone we gave $123,084.00. Much of this money goes to church planting, so in a way when you give you are a part of church planting.
In an article entitled The Value of Church Planting, Aaron Coe writes:
The church in America is going backwards. You can't explain it any other way. If reaching our country for Christ were a football game, we'd have spent the last century being pushed back toward our own goal line. That can be demoralizing for a football team — and the church, the body of Christ.
In the early 1800s, the United States had one Protestant church for every 875 people in the population. By the beginning of World War I, that ratio was one Christian church for every 430 people in the population. During that 100-year span, church planting efforts significantly outpaced the growth in the population. Yet, after World War I, the
population began to out-pace the planting of new churches.
We're doing better in some places than others. In states like Alabama, Mississippi, and Kentucky, you'll find one evangelical church for approximately every 750 people. In states like Indiana, Iowa, and Kansas, you'll find one for every 1,500 to 1,800
people. In states like Nevada, New Hampshire, New Jersey, and New York, the ratio is one for every 5,000 to 7,500 people. The people of the Northeast Corridor and Utah could be classified as unreached people groups with less than 2 percent of their population claiming to be born-again Christians. People who study missions would say to effectively penetrate an area with the gospel you need one church for every 1,000 people in the urban areas and one church for every 500 people in the rural areas.
With a passion to penetrate lostness in North America and a desire to do something about the out of balance population-to-church ratios, the North American Mission Board launched Send North America last year. Send North America is a strategy to mobilize and assist churches and individuals in hands-on church planting in 29 of its major cities and elsewhere throughout the U.S. and Canada. To use the football analogy again, we want to push the ball up the field with the goal of giving every man, woman, and child the opportunity to hear and respond to the gospel of Jesus Christ.
You can read the rest of the article at http://www.lifeway.com/Article/pastors-church-planting-missions-strategy-value-gospel. Please pray for church planters with NAMB, for our own church plant, and for the hearts of the established church to continue to support these endeavors, all for the glory of God!