'FAITH Strategy' Proving Fruitful for the Kingdom
by Allie Martin
September 21, 2004
(AgapePress) - The president of the Southern Baptist Convention is on a nationwide bus tour encouraging members of the SBC to make evangelism the number-one priority.SBC president Dr. Bobby Welch says the 50-state bus tour is a way to meet Southern Baptists at the grassroots level. Welch, who is pastor of First Baptist Church of Daytona Beach, Florida, is also the creator of the FAITH/Sunday School Evangelism Strategy. He says many churches are using the FAITH strategy to rekindle the fires of evangelism.
"Our people really are hungering and thirsting to try to figure out a way to touch the lives of their family members and their friends," Welch explains. "They may not know exactly where they're supposed to be on stem-cell research; they may not know exactly where they're supposed to be on a number of issues. But they know where their family and friends need to be with the Lord -- and they're not there."
Believers who find themselves in that predicament need help, he says. "If somebody will just bring something to them, then they will receive that and go use it."
According to the SBC leader, this approach to evangelism is now being used in 13 countries and is available in four different languages. The strategy, which equips and trains people to witness to others about their faith in Christ, is effective, he says -- but not necessarily for everyone.
"It will work if you don't care who gets saved and brought into your church," Welch stated in a recent interview. "But if you are only interested in bringing in people who look a particular way, drive a particular kind of car, and live in a particular kind of house, it may not be for you."
According to LifeWay, 184 churches that have employed the FAITH strategy have baptized more than 2,500 people who have professed a personal faith in Jesus Christ. "You cast that net out, and you will gather people in," says Welch, whose bus tour will take traveling days and cover about 20,000 miles.
