Cornerstone West Slidell Baptist Church has seen its way made straight in a manner only God could orchestrate, in His own time.
SLIDELL –
Cornerstone West Slidell Baptist Church has seen its way made straight
in a manner only God could orchestrate, in His own time.
Four
years in the making, this church plant is soon to become Thompson Road
Baptist Church, says St. Tammany Baptist Association Director of
Missions Lonnie Wascom.
“The
devil has done all he can to prevent this work from coming about, but
God’s people and their cooperative spirit have kept it alive … It’s a
God thing!” wrote Wascom in a recent email.
Indeed,
the church has four signs on the highway in front of the nearly
completed building declaring the same thing, one word at a time, to
drivers who pass by, said Cornerstone’s planter and pastor, Randy
Boyett.
When the
association probed the area in the late 1990s and discovered that there
was no church between Slidell and Lacombe, the next town west of
Slidell, Calvary Baptist, where Charles Starnes is pastor, agreed to
sponsor a plant in the area, Boyett said.
“Brother
Starnes has a heart for missions,” Boyett said. “He’s one of the most
mission-minded pastors that I know.” Calvary also sponsors an African
American mission, a Spanish mission, and prior to Katrina, a truck stop
ministry.
After
several failed attempts in the West Slidell area, Starnes asked Boyett,
on staff at Calvary as associate pastor for six years, to give it a try.
“They have
graciously kept me on staff until we were able to get the church
built,” said Boyett who is now the full-time pastor at Cornerstone.
When Katrina
hit, the mission had a regular attendance of about 40, Boyett said.
Afterwards, attendance dwindled to six. Since starting over, the church
has grown again to about 45, Boyett said.
“And all during
the two years after Katrina, we made preparations to begin building the
church on Thompson Road,” Boyett said. The Louisiana Baptist
Convention donated nine acres to the project, and construction on a
building began in earnest in January.
But the process has not been without hurdles and plenty of prayer, Boyett said.
Early on, one
man in the community protested the building and how it would be
positioned on the property, Boyett said. But the congregation began to
pray.
“God changed
[the protester’s] heart,” Boyett said. “We were able to work out an
agreement with [the man] … and get a conditional permit. God just
smoothed the way.”
After at first
passing on the project because they usually don’t work in the winter
months, a project manager for Carpenters for Christ from Atalla, Ala.,
later told Boyett in an email “the Lord wouldn’t let it go,” Boyett
said.
Though the
manager couldn’t promise whether he’d have 30 or 35 volunteers, he
showed up last January with “103 men who framed up the 7,000 square
foot building and put plywood and felt on the roof in four days,”
Boyett said.
About three
weeks later, one of those same carpenters called back with a phone
number to the Tennessee Baptist Bricklayers. This group, too, declined
the project because they had a project already planned, Boyett
said. Again, prayers were sent up, and it wasn’t long before 55
bricklayers from Tennessee arrived and laid 16,000 bricks in a day and
a half.
Next, a bivocational pastor in Texas who owned a lumberyard sold the church all its lumber at cost.
When a man in
the pastor’s church found out about it, he lopped off another 20
percent of Cornerstone’s cost of lumber by paying it himself.
The pastor then had the lumber hauled to Cornerstone on 18-wheelers and charged no shipping fees, Boyett said.
Louis Husser,
pastor at Crossgate in Robert, sent Cornerstone, at no cost, enough
ceramic tile to cover 3,000 square feet, Boyett said. Husser received
the tile from a California ministry that periodically sends him
material to distribute.
“That was a tremendous blessing,” Boyett said. “Turns out the tile works beautifully with the carpet and color scheme.”
The Spanish
mission at Calvary sent first a group to hang all the Sheetrock, free
of charge, and then a crew of finishers who completed the job at cost,
Boyett said.
“Istrouma
Baptist Church out of Baton Rouge sent two staff members to bring us a
check for $30,000, out of the blue,” Boyett continued. Calvary Baptist
in Slidell is financing the remaining cost of the building at no
interest.
Cornerstone,
located in one of the fastest-growing areas of the state, is now
strategically placed to minister to hundreds of people. Next door to
the church is a wooded piece of property where a subdivision is
planned, and across the highway, 90 homes are planned for the next
three years.
“It is so
amazing to see how God works to put His church together,” Boyett said.
“We are so excited to see how He will use this church to further His
Kingdom.”
The Cornerstone congregation is set to move into their new building by July 1.