GPS: God's Plan for Sharing - It Works!
The following is an article from Danny Rollins, Pastor at Rolling Hills Baptist Church in the Southwestern Baptist Association, emphasizing how his church's participation in GPS is influencing his community and impacting lives. Rolling Hills is one of 168 churches representing 11 associations which assisted in distributing more than 400,000 Find it Here brochures across Ohio. We rejoice with Rolling Hills and say PRAISE THE LORD for His sufficient grace, mercy and power!!
Rolling Hills Baptist Church (RHBC) purchased 15,000 bags and tracts to distribute to its town of Fairfield, Ohio. That’s enough to blanket the community, and a God-sized challenge for a church averaging 300 in worship. Over a three-week period during the time of radio and tv ads aimed at the lost in our region, we prayer-walked a significant part of the city, and then headed out with tracts and invitations to our Easter worship services and Easter Egg hunt for kids. There were over 200 volunteers involved at some level in preparation, distribution, or follow-up.
We had never done anything like this, so had no idea what to expect, but were trusting God that He would provide the harvest. We were ready with over 100 volunteers serving in three services on Easter Sunday. And God brought the people!! We ended up with a total of 558 people present. On a normal Sunday, we have 40-50 children and adults in Children’s church. On this Sunday, we had 136 children and adults, and several accepted Christ as Lord during the invitation. In the three adult services, we had many first-time visitors, several indicated on guest card they came because of brochure.
The invitation offered was a little different than normal. Rather than give a “walk down “ invitation, we offered a free Next Step Bible for those seeking to know what God’s next step was for their life. We also invited them to class that would start the following Sunday at 9:30am. Twenty-four adults picked up a Bible, and made commitments to take the next step in their life with God. More than half of these were non-church members, and many were first-time visitors.
Beth came Easter Sunday for the first time. She lives up the road from our church, but had never attended. Since her brother was in town for the Easter holiday, she decided she would bring him to a Baptist church, since he was Baptist. Either by brochure or proximity (not confirmed yet) she knew of RHBC. Of Catholic background, much was strange to her about our services, but as she left, she said her heart was particularly touched by the music. She took a Next Step Bible and promised to return for the class the following Sunday. When she got up the next Sunday to go to church, her husband asked her what she was doing. She said, “I’m missing something in my life, and I need what they have. I’m going to church.” Our prayer is that she will soon be saved.
The following Sunday (April 11), we had 50 more people than normal (350), many of which were return visitors from Easter. Of the 24 who received a Bible and committed, 17 attended the Next Step class we offered. In those worship services, the invitation again included an offer of a Bible and an additional Next Step class to start Sunday night for those who couldn’t make it Sunday morning. An additional 16 people committed to attend either next Sunday morning or the Sunday night class. Again, most are non-church members, and most were return or first-time visitors.
We are humbled by God’s blessings in this outreach event. Our people are energized and touched as they’ve seen first-hand the needs of our community up close and personal as they’ve prayer walked and distributed door-hangars.
We are grateful for the enormous logistical support we received from the Greater Cincinnati Association, and for the opportunity to partner with NAMB and the State Convention of Baptists of Ohio, in this Across North America campaign. God indeed blessed with much fruit. The work continues as we follow up.
GPS is a NAMB Evangelism Initiative designed to encourage every Christian to share their faith with every non-Christian in America, so that every lost person may hear about Jesus by the year 2020. This worthwhile initiative is made possible in part by contributions to The Cooperative Program.
