April 27, 2025
MONROE, Ga. — Reaching the 7 million plus lost people in Georgia with the gospel of Jesus Christ is a priority for Georgia Baptists. W. Thomas Hammond, Jr., executive director of the Georgia Baptist Mission Board, is meeting with pastors across the state to encourage and find ways to focus on evangelism. Also, this year’s annual meeting of the convention will include an evangelism conference.
1025 Church in Monroe has long embodied that priority. Pastor Tommy Fountain, Sr., has developed the church he serves to look outside its walls to reach the unchurched and lost people of Monroe and Walton County. He also has a passion for seeing other churches embrace the challenge of penetrating and impacting their communities with the gospel.
To help equip and encourage fellow pastors, 1025 Church hosted a “Lunch and Learn” event for pastors, church staff members, and church leaders on Monday, March 17. This annual equipping opportunity has doubled in attendance every year, with 120 church leaders attending this year. It is a joint effort of the church, the Appalachee Baptist Association, the GBMB, and Luther Rice College and Seminary.
Larry Wynn, executive director of the Georgia Baptist Health Care Foundation and former pastor of Hebron Baptist Church in Dacula, was one of the featured speakers.
“We must reach the community where God has placed us and pray that God will give us a burden for the people of our community,” Wynn stated. “Far too often we think our ministry begins and ends within the walls of the church. We need to create an environment that shows we are a church without walls.”
That environment, Wynn explained, begins with prayer. “We must be with God in the secret place before we can effectively serve God in the public place. And like Jesus, we must be concerned about the physical and social needs of the people as well as their spiritual needs.”
Wynn shared an exhaustive number of ways to penetrate the community. “Our church was in a softball league, and we decided that we would invite some unsaved people to play on our team with the purpose of winning them to Christ before the softball season ended, and it happened just as we had hoped and prayed.”
Additionally, under Wynn’s leadership, Hebron started having classes on Wednesday nights for those who were unchurched, teaching subjects such as gardening, photography, etc. Unchurched people came and some were won to faith in Christ as they heard salvation testimonies from those who were the instructors.
Hebron also provided English as a Second Languages classes, sports clinics, chaplains for the police and fire departments, the local sports teams, assistance at the concession stands at the ball games, fall festivals, wild game dinners, and many more.
Wynn shared that, “On one occasion, I went to a service station in the day when the service station personnel pumped gasoline for each customer. When I learned that proprietor had no other help at his business that day and had not eaten lunch, I agreed to pump gas for him so he could go get something to eat.”
That offer to help gave Wynn the opportunity to meet the customers, fill their tanks with gasoline, and witness to them. He declared, “It’s all about penetrating the community.”
Pastor Fountain followed Wynn on the program and challenged attendees to have a servant mindset. The 1025 church staff exemplified that “servant mindset” during the lunch hour by serving those who were in attendance.
In his address, Fountain stated, “Evaluate your community, equip your volunteers, establish your goals. However, don’t set your goals too high. Make the goals reachable, because the church needs to be able to celebrate. We have set our annual growth goals at about 10 percent, and we have been able to celebrate about a 10-12 percent increase in our membership and attendance each year.”
Fountain gave practical advice on how to reach people. “I cannot emphasize enough the importance of walking through the crowd, speak to everyone, do not have an agenda, wear apparel identifying your church, and always have information about the church with you to share with those you meet.”
Under Fountain’s leadership, 1025 Church has lovingly infiltrated the Monroe area to the extent that the church has almost become the epicenter of the community. Their emphasis is on Halls, Heroes, and Healing.
With the church’s 'Hall” strategy, the church has made the schools their mission field, asking the school leadership, ‘How can we help?’”
The church serves meals with a time for devotionals for the football teams before the games, they serve in the concession stand during the games, film the games, have renovated the field house, sponsored the end of the year sports banquets, assisted the FCA leader serving in the schools, assisted with the reading programs in the elementary schools and been deeply involved in all the school sports.
Fountain’s focus on the next generation is based on a quote he heard from the late Michael Catt, who said, “Whoever wants the next generation will get them.” His outreach to the students of Walton County is relentless.
The “Heroes” ministry includes supporting public safety, praying for first responders, taking them meals/snacks, and providing their church facility for training.
Included in the church’s “Healing” efforts the church provides a Griefshare Ministry, Celebrate Recovery, Christian counselling, a chaplain ministry for the local hospital, and the church staff and many members simply seek to be available wherever there is a need.
“When someone seeks help or support, don’t ever say ‘No,’” emphasized Fountain. “We say ‘Yes,’ and figure out how to make it happen.”
Tim Dowdy, vice president for evangelism for the North American Mission Board and former pastor of Eagle’s Landing First Baptist Church that experienced remarkable growth under his leadership, based his message on II Corinthians 5:17-21 and challenged the church leaders to “be ambassadors for Christ and the righteousness of God.”
Dowdy lamented the truth that most people in our churches are not involved in personal evangelism. Leading the church in evangelism starts with the pastor, Dowdy said. “Evangelistic churches have an evangelistic pastor. The pastor may not be the greatest evangelist in the church, but he must be committed to the work of an evangelist.”
That leadership is necessary, he explained, “Because all hell is working against what they are working to accomplish. Evangelistic churches have a focused prayer plan for bold witnessing and for the lost to be saved.”
Dowdy then shared stories about the many pastors who had committed to preaching an evangelistic sermon from John 3:16 on March 16 and indicated that he had already gotten reports from some churches, including one church in New York that saw 36 people saved on that one Sunday.
“Churches must be relentless in their focus on evangelism,” declared Dowdy. “The fire of evangelism will soon become no more than a smoking ember if the pastor is not passionate about reaching the lost. Some people in the church may not like that focus, but don’t give up!”
