The following is a guest post from KBC Missions Mobilization Coordinator, Teresa Parrett, who blogs at Kentucky and Beyond.
Just off the Mountain Parkway, on the Wolfe-Morgan County line, sits Crossroads Baptist Church, a little white church in the quaint little community of Helechawa. The building once housed the community school but has now been given to the church as a place for worship. In 2007 Crossroads was started as a mission of Faith Baptist Church, Cannel City, with a core group of 6 that soon grew to 18 church members.
In a phone conversation with Betty McGuffey recently she could not stop talking about all the things going on at their church and the mission teams that have partnered with them. She was so excited that I just had to make a trip to visit with her and see for myself the work that had been done.
Mission teams from Pellville Baptist Church in Hawesville, White Hall Baptist Church in Richmond, Mt. Washington First Baptist Church, Little Flock Baptist Church in Shepherdsville, and Shively Baptist Church in Louisville have all come alongside this little church to fix up the building and help with outreach. These teams have dry walled the sanctuary, painted, added bathrooms with showers, installed a baptistry, added siding, underpinning, put on a new roof, and landscaped. For the past six years Shively Baptist has also come to lead Vacation Bible School.
Since January 2013, seventeen people have been baptized into the fellowship of the church. Four of those baptized were under the age of 18, nine were between ages 19 and 50, and four were over 50. The oldest of those baptized was an 82 year old man, along with his wife, only a year or so younger. The church now averages 36 each Sunday. Betty shared about how they were giving to missions through their local Baptist association, the Cooperative Program, and Eliza Broadus, Annie Armstrong and Lottie Moon offerings. There is definitely a spirit of revival in this little church!
In November 2012 Crossroads voted to move from “mission” to “church” status. They will be one of at least ten churches to be welcomed to the Kentucky Baptist Convention family as one of our affiliated churches during this year’s annual meeting. Red River Baptist Association Director of Missions George Drake shared that West Liberty Baptist Church had been the mother church of Faith Baptist Church in the early 1980s, Faith Baptist Church was the mother church of Grace Baptist Church in the mid-1990s and Crossroads Baptist Church in 2007. Grace Baptist Church was the mother church of Wrigley Baptist in 2005. Perhaps sometime in the future we will hear that Crossroads has also birthed a church.
Churches helping churches and churches planting churches; this is the cooperative Kentucky Baptist way!
