Is your Church made up of the following? Babies, children, teenagers, young adults’, old people like me! Ha! Children’s Sunday school, Adult Sunday School, Youth programs, Senior programs, Out reach into your community, better known as The Great Commission, Weekly baptisims??????? If not why not?
If your Church ceased to exist, would it be missed? George Barna: “People have become more selfish, churches have become less influential, pastors have become less Bible-centric”
Baptist Press
By Jessica Pigg, posted July 31, 2024 in Churches and Ministry, Evangelism
WINTER GARDEN, Fla. (BP) — What is the secret to a spiritual awakening taking place among students in central Florida?
It’s really no secret at all.
First Baptist Church in Winter Garden and Foundation Academy, a private Christian school in Winter Garden, have partnered together to integrate the gospel into every aspect of students’ educational life, resulting in a campus-wide spiritual revival.
“All we’ve done is pray and obey, love Christ well, and share God’s love with the students through every available avenue,” said John Bradley, student ministry director at First Baptist Church in Winter Garden.
Over this past 2023-2024 academic year, this intentional gospel integration into daily school activities has seen countless students “come to understand that there is a difference between having knowledge about the things of God and following through on them in faith and obedience,” Bradley said.
Many students have made professions of faith in Jesus as they realized that a Christian commitment “takes more than behavior to ‘be good enough,’” Bradley said. “It requires surrender to the lordship of Christ,” which includes following through “in obedience” in matters such as baptism, church involvement, serving or personal discipleship.
First Baptist Winter Garden pastors and Foundation Academy faculty say the movement of God among the students started in September 2023 when Bradley and Jeffrey Lawrence, director of spiritual development at the school, began to teach more directly on doctrine and theology—challenging students to think more intentionally about their personal relationships with God.
“We began to teach more directly on theology and doctrine, primarily who God is, how we can know Him, and what He produces in us. Students were challenged to evaluate their relationship with God and test its foundation,” Bradley said. More Here
Hope Still Shines Through, Even For Dying Churches
The Cultural Research Center at Arizona Christian University released new findings from its 2024 American Worldview Inventory Tuesday. Based on responses from 2,000 adults surveyed in January 2024, the data compared views on moral behaviors across groups of American adults sorted by generation.
“Millennials and Gen Z have largely dismissed Christianity as an irrelevant faith,” George Barna, a prominent Evangelical pollster and director of the Cultural Research Center, said in a statement. More Here