Hard Times Tough Churches Awesome God!: 13 Churches that faced losing almost...Everything!

By John N. Vaughan

hard times
tough churches
awesome god!
13 Churches that faced losing almost...Everything!

Miami Detroit Orlando San Diego
Jacksonville New Orleans Mobile
Springfield Oklahoma City Birmingham

• Language: English
• Publisher: Xlibris US
• Release date: Feb 26, 2010
• ISBN: 9781450036108

John N. Vaughan

He is past president and founding editor of the American Society of Church Growth. Since 1985 he has compiled and published the annual lists of America 100 Largest and 100 Fastest Growing Churches in Church Growth Today Newsletter. He is a graduate of Fuller Theological Seminary and Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary. www.churchgrowthtoday.org

Book preview

Copyright © 2010 by John N. Vaughan.

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the copyright owner.

Any people depicted in stock imagery provided by Getty Images are models, and such images are being used for illustrative purposes only.

Certain stock imagery © Getty Images.

Rev. date: 05/15/2024

Xlibris

844-714-8691

www.Xlibris.com

565838

CONTENTS

Acknowledgements

About the Author

Introduction

Hurricane Katrina’s Impact On Churches—2005

The 2007 Tornado of Greensburg Kansas

and the Churches

Springhill Baptist Church ● Green County, Missouri

Christ Fellowship of Miami ● Palmetto Bay, Florida

Dauphin Way Baptist Church ● Mobile, Alabama

Detroit World Outreach Christian Center Church ●

Redford, Michigan

First Baptist Church ● Jacksonville, Florida

First Baptist Orlando ● Orlando FL

First Southern Baptist Church ● Del City Oklahoma

Franklin Avenue Baptist Church ●

New Orleans, Louisiana

Frazer Memorial United Methodist Church ●

Montgomery, Alabama

Hunter Street Baptist Church ● Hoover, Alabama

NorthRidge Church ● Plymouth, Michigan

Northwest Baptist Church ● Miami, Florida

Skyline Wesleyan Church ● LaMesa, California

Dedicated to

My wife

My mother and father

Pastors, staff and members of the churches in this book. This book is also dedicated to both U.S. and global congregations that have been mighty in Spirit for having faced and overcome challenges that at times have been overwhelmingly huge. Some churches give their all and still are unable to prevail. All we have is today and our hopes for tomorrow. We can offer our sacrifice of praise to God who is sovereign and cares for His people and knows our names, faith, hearts, and limitations.

My mentors and teachers:

Dr. Elmer L. Towns

Dr. C. Peter Wagner

Dr. Charles Chaney

Acknowledgements

Appreciation is expressed to pastors, past and/or present, for their willingness to share the story of both their own ministries and those of the churches they lead. Pastors, like churches, change over time. Eight of the pastors who share their stories in the following chapter still lead the congregation described in this book. Others, like John Maxwell, Tom Elliff and John Ed Mathison shared about their times before, during, or after the times of radical disruptive challenges that faced the congregations they led. Brad Powell is an example of a pastor that has had opportunity to be directly and indirectly involved with two of the churches. Without their help and willingness to share this book would have not been possible.

Some of the churches experienced their season of disruption early in their history, some after they had begun to taste periods of great growth, and others more recently. While some have experienced great growth since the time of turbulence, a few still minister in rapidly changing communities that have resulted in back door growth that almost equals front and side door growth. Hopefully, you will find yourself in some of these pages and even find yourself offering prayers of thanks and encouragement for the pastors who lead these churches and the thousands of others they represent.

For the past 30 years I have been busy attempting to capture the stories of church leaders while the memories are fresh. Sometimes the pain is too intense while it is happening for a leader to share much of the accounts. Sometimes the experiences involved in the transitions can only be shared by pastors that succeed them in ministry at the church. All of the stories provide keys, potential solutions, and traps to avoid for men that lead churches in other places and other times that these men will never have occasion to meet in this lifetime. These are stories of men of God, and their congregations, who were encouraged and sometimes admonished by God as they learned to walk with Him. Those spiritual expeditions included seasons of success and sometimes devastation of almost overwhelming leadership challenges.

This book is no quick fix attempt to simply tell you simply this year’s stories about a collection of churches going through hard times. Instead it looks at the larger history of each church over time, to share with you the real life stories of churches. Mostly churches have grown to be large churches today and never dreamed they would come to a place where they would potentially face losing almost everything. In some instances, I am talking about being 30 days from locking doors permanently, arsonists burning all that a church has to the ground, community change that leaves a sanctuary 80 percent empty on Sundays, and even where the total staff decides to receive no salaries for an indefinite period of time. They never though it would happen to them, just like you probably don’t think it could ever happen to your church.

These churches experienced frightening ordeals of magnitude that most church will probably never experience . . . but could experience. The story of their experiences, some more recent than others, are all historic events that allow others to learn how an awesome and all powerful God chose to intervene and lead them to a new and brighter future. Some are still recovering while others have become some of the largest and even the fastest growing churches in the nation. They represent a variety of crises that many other churches have experienced, are now also experiencing, or may experience in the future. Obviously, there are also many churches that have suffered these same crises that have not, and will not, survive. Hopefully, the churches in the pages of this books will let you see how the leaders and congregations of these particular churches were able to cooperate with God in His intended plan for them to rebound and live again.

Change, over time, provides perspective that last weeks news, whether by blog, published article or book written about a church’s growth during the past two years can seldom provide. A single recent snapshot, digital or otherwise, is no substitute for a series of snapshots collected across time. Video, depending on which technology the nation you live in uses as its standard, is usually best viewed at about 30 frames a second. Whatever the nation, the technology, or frame rate, video is still universally made up of multiple and different photo frames in each second of video. Each of those 15-45 different picture images can be frozen in time and viewed as separate moments in time. Each separate has its own story that it can tell us.

Life is short and ministries are briefer that they may appear at any moment. We all serve an awesome God, as illustrated in Jesus, that is still Lord of the storms that face every fragile ministry. I thank God, and these men, for the opportunity to share the stories of how God in His mercy has chosen to lead them through their storms. Be blessed and be encouraged!

John N. Vaughan

September, 2009

image003.jpg

About the Author

John N. Vaughan

Past president and Founding Editor

American Society for Church Growth

Church Growth Journal of the American Society for Church Growth

1st Church growth bibliography of the

20th Century (Vol 4. 1993)

GRADUATE

University of Memphis BA (sociology, history)

Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary MDiv Ft Worth,

Fuller Theological Seminary DMin Pasadena, California

AUTHOR

The Complete Book of Church Growth (1981)

The World’s 20 Largest Churches (1984)

Editions—English (1984), Korean (1984)

1st abbreviated history of megachurches

1st book about the world’s 20 largest churches

The Large Church (1985)

Foreword, Dr. Yonggi Cho, Yoido Full Gospel Church, Seoul,

South Korea.

Edited version of my dissertation for

Fuller Theological Seminary on

Satellite churches (i.e. multi-site locations)

in the world’s largest churches as valid church growth strategy.

Issues—implications of megachurches and the theology and definition of church.

Absolutely Double Editions—English (1990), Korean (1990),

Bulgarian (1995)

Book about the world’s largest Baptist church.

Megachurches & America’s Cities (1993)

1st book title to use the term Megachurch.

1st defined 2000+ attendance as megachurch

1st defined 10,000+ attendance as m2

1st to contrast: megachurch & megaministry

America’s Most Influential Churches—Volume 1 (2006, 2008)

50 churches in each volume Volume 2 (2008)

RESEARCH RELATED TRAVEL

Visited more than 1,000 U.S. and global megachurches in

Canada, China, South Korea,

Brazil, Chile, Paris, Germany, Rome, Istanbul.

CONTRIBUTOR

Almanac of the Christian World (1990,1993)

1st list of world’s 50 largest churches

Magazines

The Church Report (Phoenix AZ)

Listed 50 Most Influential Churches

Outreach (Vista / San Diego CA)

Listed 100 largest & the 100 fastest growing

U.S. churches from Church Growth Today research. (2003-2005)

Actually launched their Annual Listing by sharing the Church Growth Today exclusive copyrighted lists owned by John Vaughan.

NEWSLETTER

Church Growth Today newsletter (1985-present)

Endorsed as the official newsletter and printed publication of the American Society for Church Growth from its founding in 1986-1994.

1st list of world’s 20 largest churches

1st list of world’s largest home-group churches

1st list—500 fastest growing US churches

1st list—U.S. church growth consultants

Annual list 100 largest U.S. churches

(Non-catholic—since 1985)

Annual list 100 fastest growing U.S.

churches (non-catholic—since 1985)

1st Church growth bibliography of the 20th Century

CREATOR of the INTERNET DOMAINS:

Church Growth Today (.com, .net, .org)

Megachurches (.com, .net, .org)

Contact Information

Dr. John N. Vaughan

Church Growth Today

P.O. Box 47

Bolivar, Missouri 65613 USA

Telephone [phone]

[e-mail]

www.churchgrowthtoday.org

http://johnnvaughan.blogspot.com

Introduction

This is not a book about just the churches impacted by hurricane Katrina in 2005 or the tornado that destroyed all of the churches and the town of Greensburg, Kansas, in 2007. But it is a book that includes both of their stories because they are representative of other large groups of churches, towns and cities that have and will experience widespread and catastrophic disasters. Neither the Gulf Coast states nor Greensburg, Kansas, are back to normal. Churches from across the nation still continue to pray for and be involved in the lives of the churches and people of these places.

Hard Times, Tough Churches, Awesome God is an attempt to introduce you to churches that never imagined that they would, at some point in their separate histories, face the prospect of losing everything but their faith and trust in their awesome God. Some of the churches faced their perfect storm earlier or later than others. For that reason I have tried to give you a broader picture of their ministries from the time each of them began as a church. This is intentional because I want you to see their time of testing, like your own, in the context of both the good times and their tough times.

Very simply, these pages focus on churches and God. The earlier accounts summarize the impact on churches in two different regions of the nation—New Orleans, Louisiana and Greenfield, Kansas. Their story is followed by one chapter each about 13 churches in mixed areas of the nation. Their demographics include: inner city churches in the hood, open country rural, Latino communities, black communities, white communities, Southern Baptist, Independent, United Methodist, Wesleyan, poor and wealthy.

Issues and causes leading to the disruption experienced by the churches include: fire and/or arson, community change, financial decisions, leadership issues, relocation, internal conflict, hurricane, tornado, zoning policies, and federally mandated legislation. Some churches experienced the force of more than just one of the factors.

The first church is also the smallest church among the thirteen. I promise you that whatever the size of your congregation you will not want to miss reading the story of the Spring Hill Baptist Church located in Green County, Missouri. Their story is followed by twelve other churches that include some of the largest in the nation.

One or more of the pastors, past and/or present, of almost all of these churches have shared the stories of their church in interviews with me. Most of these particular churches were selected from among nearly 150 churches interviewed from all regions of the nation. I have personally visited on-site more than 1,000 of the largest churches in the U.S., Canada and a dozen other countries. Thousands of other churches like yours have shared their stories and growth information since 1985 as I have compiled and published lists of America’s largest and fastest growing churches.

Some of the men who led the churches in these pages, in the time of crisis, now lead other churches, Christian organizations, retired, or recently died. An important lesson to be learned from these chapters is that churches and personal pastoral ministries are always changing and are always only a part of larger histories. I am grateful to have been at the right place at the right time to be able to hear the challenges that the churches faced under their leadership. As time passes vital information can fade and even be lost forever. They shared their stories to benefit your ministry at your church.

Even the largest and fastest growing congregations are not immune to the kinds of unexpected disruptions in personal ministry and congregational life described in these pages. There are churches that lost 1,000 members because of the outcome of a congregational vote in a business meeting. Another church lost 3,000 members in one day. You will find a brief quote at the top of the first page of each chapter that indicates at least one of the major crisis issues and/or event facing that particular church.

Because this book is written and published as a digital ebook, changes and updates are able to be made by the author instantaneously. That means that it is a living book that can be updated daily whenever the respective church leaders want to share ministry updates important to them and their churches. If you would like to have the story of your congregation in a future volume, feel free to contact me personally. My contact information is included at the bottom of the About the Author section of this book.

Hurricane Katrina’s

Impact On Churches—2005

How do churches face major disruptions that abruptly and unexpectedly bring numerical growth, or no growth, to a screeching halt? The answer depends on the individual congregation. Such times expose the foundation upon which that group of people has centered its past limited energies and resources. If they have learned to cooperate with God in His plan for the congregation they have an advantage over a church founded on other priorities. It needs to be recognized, however, that you can do everything right and still be decimated when faced with overwhelming forces.

Hurricane Katrina’s Impact on Churches

When Hurricane Katrina invaded the Gulf Coast states in late August of 2005 most of the walls of First Baptist Church of Gulfport, Mississippi, collapsed. Only a shell of the building remained as the storm made its way westward toward New Orleans. The category 5 storm that caused some havoc as it began in south Florida gained strength as it moved through Alabama, Mississippi,