Two years ago, the Kentucky Baptist Convention adopted a new mission statement: “The Kentucky Baptist Convention—created for churches, by churches, to help churches reach Kentucky and the world for Christ.” We also adopted a new, streamline organizational staffing structure of five teams to facilitate our focus on helping the local church.
The largest among the five teams is the Church Consulting and Revitalization Team. The CCR team exists to equip and strengthen churches in every ministry area. In addition to individual consultants who specialize in areas like worship ministry, women’s ministry, discipleship, etc., we have six regional consultants who serve in a designated geographical area. Our consultants are Alan Witham, Todd Gray, Paul Badgett, Nick Sandefur, Alan Dodson, and Jeff Crabtree. These men are daily about the business of calling on pastors, planters, church leaders, and directors of missions, to encourage and equip them in their ministry.
The following excerpt from an email I recently received from Pastor Jeremy Atwood typifies the feedback I consistently hear regarding our consultants.
“On Sunday I celebrated two years as the pastor of New Harvest Baptist Church in Caneyville (Grayson County) as well as the start of a new fiscal church year. The church had been in significant decline but truly wanted to grow. Not long after I was called to New Harvest I began meeting with Jeff Crabtree. Jeff has become a great resource and friend. New Harvest had great potential and I had a vision for what we could become. Jeff helped me map out that vision and on Sunday we celebrated what God has done at NHBC over the past two years.
Here are some of those statistics:
• In two years worship attendance has increased 55% from 45 to 70
• After doing away with Sunday evening worship and moving to a small group model our total discipleship participation increased from 24 to 75 (total enrollment)
• VBS enrollment increased by 88% as we had 111 enrolled in VBS this summer
• Offerings increased by 22%
• We increased our missions giving (Cooperative Program, local missions, etc) from 1.5% to 8.5% and will move to 10% this church year
• Our new church year began July/August and we have already surpassed total baptisms from last year
While God has brought the increase, he has used the KBC, the church revitalization team, and especially Jeff Crabtree help us in our journey. I wanted to share these numbers with you to say thank you for helping small rural churches and for leading a convention and a team of servants who care so much about the local church.”
I thank God for all of the churches giving through the Cooperative Program that resulted in churches like New Harvest being strengthened.
