When tourists in coastal Georgia glance out of their car windows, they see moss-draped trees reminiscent of tales of the Old South. As real estate developers study the growth patterns of surrounding counties that stand ready to explode with new employment opportunities, they see dollar signs.

But when pastors like Greg Yount of Hinesville look over pages of numbers showing growth trends in their communities they see souls to be saved and laity who need to be equipped to share their faith with friends and neighbors.

Yount knows the statistics well. He's followed the state's growth for nearly 10 years and has watched as Christians have become an increasingly smaller part of the population.

New residents from around the world continue to pour into the three counties in his association, and churches seem powerless to make a dent in the swelling ranks of the lost and the unchurched.

At least until this year, when New Sunbury Baptist Association will launch the most far-reaching evangelistic emphasis in its history.

Yount's congregation South Main Baptist Church may average only 50 in Sunday morning worship but it's representative of the majority of smaller churches which make up the backbone of the Georgia and Southern Baptist conventions. It's churches like his, partnering with each other in missions and evangelism, which will largely determine if the SBC reverses the trend on its plateaued baptisms and posts a record number in the 2005 church year.

 

Bible Belt no longer

The Peach State may historically be in the Bible Belt but the mission field on which Georgia Baptists live reflects few of those historic values. According to data provided by Research Services Ministries of the Georgia Baptist Convention, Yount's community typical of many in the state is growing faster than his and other churches can respond with outreach.

That's what has him worried.

With recent figures showing the unchurched now totaling nearly 90 percent - 87.6 percent of the 84,000 residents in Liberty, Long, and MacIntosh counties - Yount says the Bible Belt designation is a relic of the nation's past.

The statistics are harsh:

• Of the 84,000 residents in the association's three counties, which include one church in Bryan County, 73,632 (87.6 percent) do not attend any church. Of those residents, 59,500 (71 percent) are not members of any faith group. The figures are based on 2003 population estimates and supporting data from the Glenmary Research Center, as provided by Research Services Ministries of the Georgia Baptist Convention.

As part of the state convention's Wave Revivals which began in mid-February, Yount and fellow pastors are working overtime to harvest as many of those newcomers and longtime residents as possible. Crossover New Sunbury, which will be held March 4-12, is just the first of several evangelistic ventures designed to take the gospel to some of the state's newest residents.

"We had several people who told us we couldn't do it but now they are our strongest supporters," he says as he talks about answered prayer and the laity who have accepted the challenge. "This is a partnership between our churches, the association, and the Georgia Baptist Convention. It wouldn't have happened without that mutual support," he explains.

"Georgia is more lost this morning than when I went to bed last night. But our 19 churches and two missions are no longer going to sit by and say 'What a pity.' They are going to get out of the pew and do something about it."

While the population of many northern states is slowing, things are different down South. Georgia, for example, remains one of the brightest spots for growth in the nation as the New Sunbelt continues to gain in popularity.

Just how popular has the Peach State become?

• Between 1980 and 1990 the state's population grew from 5.4 million residents to 6.4 million - an increase of 19 percent.
• Between 1990 and 2000 the state grew from 6.4 million residents to 8.1 million - a staggering 26 percent.
• The current decade, from 2000 to 2009, is expected to see an increase from 8.1 million residents to 10.3 million. While that is a slower increase of 17 percent, it still remains nearly double the 9 percent increase expected for the nation.

A closer look at information compiled for the GBC Statistical Summary - a listing of churches, membership, baptisms, and other criteria from 1910 through 2003 - shows how the state convention continues to lag behind the population growth.

 

More churches not enough

While Georgia Baptists are not the only Christian group trying to reach the state, its size could be viewed as an indicator of how other groups are doing as well.

• From 1980 to 1990 Georgia Baptist churches increased from 2,972 to 3,179 - a total of only 207 churches to serve an additional 1,020,665 residents. That meant Georgia Baptists started only one church for every 4,930 new residents.
• From 1990 to 2000 when the state experienced a staggering growth of 26 percent (from 6,478,221 to 8,186,453), GBC church growth jumped 50% to 301 churches.

While the growth is commendable from the previous decade, those churches still represented only one new congregation for every 5,675 new residents.

Baptisms also creeped along at a snail's pace, according to the information compiled from the Annual Church Profile.

For example, during the decade of greatest increase (26 percent population growth from 1990-2000) Georgia Baptists baptized a total of 368,368 against an influx of 1,708,232 new residents.

To be fair, not all of the new residents were unchurched, but national trends would indicate that most were non-believers.

If Georgia Baptists are going to carry their weight in reaching the state for Christ, churches are going to need to be more creative in how they respond to the needs in their communities.

Shady Grove Baptist Church in Marietta is one such church that has taken some steps necessary to reinvent itself while remaining true to biblical principles.

The church, which averages 150 in worship, was founded in 1848 just three years after the Southern Baptist Convention was founded in downtown Augusta. Like most churches in the fledging denomination it was a country church, isolated from other communities by dozens of miles of corn and other crops.

Throughout the Civil War, Reconstruction, two World Wars, a Great Depression, and the Korean and Viet Nam conflicts the church saw little need or pressure to change.

"For most of its life it didn't need to change, but when urban sprawl from Atlanta suddenly encroached on its peaceful landscape, it didn't know how," explains pastor Tom Cocklereece.

The congregation began to explore a variety of ways to reach into a community crisscrossed with new roads and subdivisions. Armed with data from Noonday Baptist Association and the GBC, Cocklereece and members decided to add a second worship service that would focus on the needs of the newcomers.

"We asked our older members who were more comfortable with the traditional 11 a.m. service if they would mind meeting at 8:30 a.m. They agreed that if that's what it would take to reach their children and the other young families moving into the area, the change would be worth it," he says.

 

Attracting unlikely attenders

"We launched that second service in October and were surprised how well it was received. The new service is in our Family Life Center and directed toward the younger members of our community. We have virtually the same preaching, including use of PowerPoint, but the music is a little more contemporary.

"Now we have more attending the new service than who attend the morning service, and the vast majority are those who most likely never would have attended the traditional service," he explains.

The proof is in the numbers. Cocklereece says the congregation used to average 50 visitors a year; now they average that number in a month. The church used to have 110 in attendance in one service; now they have 160 in both.

"Since October we added 18 members, 4 by baptism, and have more than 20 who are good prospects for making professions of faith.

"We can't get into a lot of homes by knocking on doors because of the number of gated communities, so we changed ourselves so they couldn't resist staying away. We can't go to them, but now they willingly come to us."

Cocklereece says he's not trying to grow two congregations in one church, but rather is trying to grow one church with two styles of worship.

"If we were still in a rural setting we would not need to change a thing. It worked fine for 150 years. But suddenly we were surrounded by thousands of lost people who moved right onto our field and who needed to hear about Jesus.

"We may not be able to knock on many doors, but we are finding ways of intentionally getting out into the community and putting ourselves in front of our new neighbors. We are visiting people on the first day they worship with us, we are prayer walking in communities, we even spent a Friday morning giving out hot coffee to commuters on the corner where our church is located."

The key, he stresses, is that the congregation was willing to try new things - and the risk paid off.

"It's priceless to see new folks coming to faith in Christ at Shady Grove and asking us how long we've been here. The truth is we were always here, but we just lost sight of how to be relevant in a changing world."

Mike Faulkner, pastor of North View Baptist Church in Dallas, is up against a similar challenge. It's not unlike the challenge being faced by most new churches that are seeking acceptance in a secular world that believes churches are just sentimental relics of a bygone era.

 

Need for a church met

The 62-member congregation in Paulding County is meeting in a triple-wide trailer leased from the GBC and is using a double-wide trailer, donated by First Baptist Church of Kennesaw, for educational space. It operates on a shoestring budget but is growing through a partnership with 9 churches.

The land on which the church meets was purchased 20 years ago by an individual who saw there would one day be a need for a church in the community. That day has come. Where there used to be no houses, today there are 14 subdivisions within a three-mile radius of the church, with each averaging 150 homes.

Research Ministries of the GBC provided demographic data from within a 5-mile radius of the church, and from that the church began to build its outreach.

"We learned that 25 percent of the population is under the age of 18, so that impacted how we structured our children and youth ministries. And that, in turn, told us we had a lot of families so we have planned family financial seminars and other ministries to meet those needs," Faulkner says.

"Our congregation, though it will only celebrate its fourth anniversary next month, was shocked to realize that up to 60 percent of our community is unchurched. They would have no problem believing that of Atlanta with its size or some other part of the state, but here in Dallas? That was hard to accept," he says.

With that vision of a lost community within a stone's throw of the church, Faulkner says members have embraced a more realistic world view - a view that calls for more aggressively taking the gospel to a lost Georgia.

"Two months after Legacy Church in Powder Springs was launched in January 2001, it decided it would be involved in church planting and helped birth us. They, along with Towneview Baptist Church in Kennesaw, made the sacrifices necessary to help us get on our feet so we could share Christ as a new congregation in this part of the county," he says.

"The congregation eventually entered partnerships with seven other churches that help them in a variety of ways.

"Now the leadership of North View has decided to return the favor and make a similar commitment to those who are unchurched in our county. We have begun setting aside funds to start another church, and believe that one day we will be a mother church for people who are yet to be won to Christ."