Churches unite to 'Saturate Gwinnett' with the gospel

LAWRENCEVILLE, Ga. — The Gwinnett Metro Baptist Network met for its annual meeting at Loganville Baptist Church on Oct. 2 and formally announced its intent to take the gospel to every street, home, and person in Gwinnett County.

Brian Parker, executive director of the Gwinnett Metro Baptist Network, said this movement, called Saturate Gwinnett, is going to formally begin Jan. 1, 2026, and aims to reach the more than one million people in Gwinnett County one door at a time. Parker said there are around 350,000 homes in the county, and there are 150 churches. If every church knocks on approximately 2400 doors this year, or 50 doors per week, then the gospel will be shared in no time. “It is 20 people in a church knocking on 10 homes each month. That’s doable. That’s just walking down one street, praying on that street and for that street, and praying for each person in that home.”

Parker said he hopes Saturate Gwinnett will get pastors and churches to talk with the people in their community, build friendships and relationships with them, pray with them, and let God open doors and open hearts. If every church will participate and every pastor will mobilize their congregation to participate, “we can literally saturate Gwinnett with the gospel this year,” said Parker.

This is a movement and not a program.  Churches will participate in different ways and schedules.  Some churches will do this through their weekly visitation programs or through their small groups, or even through their staffs. Some are going to do it on a quarterly basis through the small groups, and some larger churches will mobilize 100 or 200 people to do a one-day big event (such as a Saturday before Easter or another evangelism day). “If they knock on 24 doors, then they can reach their 2400 in one day,” said Parker.

He believes that one church cannot do it alone. It is all the churches mobilizing as many people as possible that will bring about gospel saturation. “I think all of our church members know how to pray. They can listen to the people in their neighborhood, and they can pray for their needs. When a person does that, God gets to be the All-Star. When we make ourselves available,  God can and will move into their hearts.”

Parker said the Gwinnett Metro Baptist Network is equipping people to do this evangelism in a number of ways. 

• Creating an app that will digitally track each home and street they reach, which homes they pray over and pray for, which homes they actually speak to the resident, and which homes they share the gospel with. 
• Creating training videos to help pastors and leaders mobilize their congregations and get them excited to participate. 
• Providing paper and digital prayer cards to be used by each church.
• Building a website where the gospel will be presented in approximately 30 languages. When a person goes to a home where a different language is spoken, that person can pull up the website and present the gospel in that language immediately.  

Besides the pastor and church mobilization, there are other opportunities to participate in the movement, including a one-day “Saturate Students” event, where they will train middle school and high school students to pray and share the gospel with people, a one-day “College Saturate” day, where they will partner with state collegiate ministries, and an eight-week summer internship called “Summer Saturate” which, through the Georgia Baptist Collegiate Ministry Send Me Now Missions, will provide evangelism training with the help of a full time evangelist. They will go door-to-door and provide help with Vacation Bible Schools. “It’s exciting to see God put these specific things together,” Parker said. 

Parker made this announcement after months of prayer and looking at the associational role to facilitate evangelism. “For me, the network's role is to help our churches be encouraged, supported, trained, and equipped to go evangelize their community.  If we all do that together, we can take the gospel to a million people.”

Parker, who has been the associational missionary strategist since January, knows he is building on the solid foundation of his predecessor and pushing the GMBN to focus on evangelism.  “My heart is that every pastor would focus his life and ministry on evangelism. When evangelism stops, so does discipleship,” he said. “If we are going to reach Georgia for Christ, evangelism has to be at the forefront.”

He hopes this movement goes beyond Gwinnett and that other pastors, churches, and Christians will want to be a part of it. “It’s bigger than me, it’s bigger than one church. It’s about pastors and people taking a shot and being a part of something bigger than themselves.  It is about getting active in the sharing of the gospel and believing that God is going to open a door, open a heart, and lives are going to be changed.’” He concluded, “As pastors and churches mobilize and start talking and praying with people, I think we are going to see God do some amazing things we never even thought possible, and it’s going to bring Him glory.”