Ken Fong, 44 Pastor of Evergreen Baptist Church in Rosemead, California We’ve initiated a 10-week program called Quest. It’s a sort of Socratic, postmodern evangelism course for skeptics and churched people who are wrestling with doubts and need a safe place to ask questions. It’s not an apologetics course or an attempt to give people all the answers; rather, it’s about pointing people toward the truth. Quest students take part in small groups, personal journaling, and the reading of thought-provoking books. Our church is made up mostly of Asian Americans, and our research has suggested that reaching this group with the gospel requires a less confrontational, more relational style of evangelism.
Arthur Mackey, Jr., 33 Assistant pastor at Mount Sinai Missionary Baptist Church in Roosevelt, New York We’ve begun a regular morning prayer meeting at the church from 6 to 7 o’clock, Monday through Friday. The first 20 minutes is spent in silent prayer. Then the second half is made up of devotions and group prayers. We started it as an emergency measure to corporately pray for our senior pastor, my father, who was hospitalized with a sudden illness. But we’ve since decided to make it a regular part of our church life. It has given us a greater sensitivity to those who are hurting and a more active understanding of intercessory prayer.
Max Lucado, 44 Minister at Oak Hills Church of Christ, San Antonio, Texas We have started a program called “Pray for Ten.” Each member of the congregation is challenged to compile and pray daily for a list of 10 people. Having our people intercede for at least 10 others affords us a positive way to measure the impact of the church.
Joel Hunter, 49 Pastor of Northland Church in Longwood, Florida We are pioneering a new form of church: the distributed church. It is different than the parish, “local church with a missions outreach” model. It is a church in many locations at once. We have even changed our name to Northland, A Church Distributed. In 12 years, we’ve grown into a megachurch with about 6,000 attending every week, but we are not nearly as concerned about getting more people here as we are about going beyond ourselves to someone else.
Therefore, we are intentionally building relationships with church partners across the community and from around the world.
We hope to actually worship with our partners in ways that transcend geographic distance. For instance, this year we worshiped jointly, via satellite, with a partner church in New Hampshire, and later this year we will do the same with our partners in Nambia, Africa.
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