The Cooperative Program undergirds First Baptist Church of North Mobile’s goal that the sun would never set on the church.
SARALAND, Ala. (BP) – The Cooperative Program undergirds First Baptist Church of North Mobile’s goal that the sun would never set on the church.
This is a church where more than 1,300 people attend Sunday morning worship, where about 175 people last year went on one of 17 overseas missions assignments, and where last year 10.6 percent of undesignated offerings was given to missions through the Cooperative Program.
This is a church with a focus on people, a call from God to reach the world, and a commitment to obedience.
“I tell people I’m a missionary to rednecks; we look upon that term fondly,” said Ed Litton, pastor of First North Mobile, which is located in a blue-collar suburb of Mobile, Ala. “Our goal is to reach the people who live here for Christ and help them grow and become missional.
“We have a growing community and our focus is this immediate mission field, but we try to think globally about everything,” the pastor continued. “We want people to see themselves as missionaries … even their sufferings and difficulties. Everything in their lives are platforms for God to communicate His gospel to others.”
The Cooperative Program is an important first step of obedience for the church to do its part to fulfill the Great Commission, said Litton, who recently was elected president of the 2009 SBC Pastors Conference.
“I believe in the Cooperative Program,” said Litton, a former church planter in Arizona whose support then came from the way Southern Baptists pool mission dollars to combine the efforts and resources of local churches to most effectively make a difference in the lives of people across the nation and around the world.
“I think the Cooperative Program is one of the most ingenious funding mechanisms ever created and I support it,” Litton said. “The Cooperative Program allows me to participate with other Southern Baptists in Kingdom work. Ultimately the purpose is to get the gospel to the nations, and that’s what we’re attempting to do.
“I would personally love to see more CP dollars get directly to the mission field,” the pastor continued. “I believe the local church has to make their own decision as to the level of participation, but it is my responsibility as a pastor to lead my people to give.”
He tells the First North Mobile congregation, “Your church tithes and you need to tithe,” Litton said.
“There’s seldom a direct benefit to us but that’s not why we give,” the pastor said. “Our motivation is to support our missionaries and support taking the gospel to communities everywhere. The benefit is we’re part of something bigger than ourselves.”
Much has changed since First North Mobile called Litton as pastor 14 years ago.
The church had relocated and dropped its Cooperative Program giving to 4 percent, for one thing. Litton led the church to raise it “by a couple percentage points a year” to its current 10.6 percent.
“I cannot find that we ever took an international mission trip before 12 years ago,” the pastor said. “We went to Brazil and had an amazing evangelistic experience there, and since that time we’ve had quite a few appointments [to career missionary service] from our church.”
Church members who are trained in Evangelism Explosion and who use it locally in outreach to the suburban Mobile community are given scholarships up to 50 percent of the cost to go on overseas mission trips to the nation of their choice. Billy Graham – the other Billy Graham – is First North Mobile’s evangelism and missions pastor. He is blind and a paraplegic, and leads with wise counsel from his godly heart, Litton said.
“His obvious handicap is our secret weapon,” the pastor said. “Our people rise to provide leadership under his guiding hand.” It’s laypeople in the church who develop a passion for a specific international mission field, and who recruit others to join them on mission there, the pastor explained.
“We believe the local church should be directly involved in missions,” Litton said. “That’s one of the ways God is calling more people to the mission field – by sending them on short-term assignments.”
Missional living and missionary outreach starts at home, the pastor said. First North Mobile has strong children and youth programs, including a vibrant VBS as well as a children’s ministry that links parents in the training of their children, and a specific training program for parents to lead their children to Christ.
“We connect with people, help lead them to Christ and then disciple them, and the first step of discipleship is obedience; that’s where baptism comes in,” Litton said. “It’s based on relationships, helping people grow in the Lord.”
It’s this strategy that has led the church to baptize an average of 140 people a year for each of the last 10 years.
The church during that time also built a 1,500-seat worship center and added 19 acres of property without incurring additional debt.
It’s this strategy that led Litton about five years ago to develop an outdoors television program as an evangelistic outreach.
“Most of the guys in my church have grown up hunting,” the pastor said. “They’re very skilled at it. They talk hunting. They know hunting. So we taught them to use a camera, and send them out all over the country, outfitted with all the camera equipment and their hunting gear.”
They come back from deer and turkey hunts with the digital equivalent of miles of camera film, which the church’s producer edits into 30-minute programs that later are aired on The Sportsman’s Channel, NRB Channel and, coming this fall, the Maximum Adventure Network cable and Direct TV channels as well as the local ABC affiliate – to about 30 million households a week, in all.
“We target unchurched people so most of our programs air on Sunday morning, while believers are in church,” Litton said. “We are expanding into prime time also.”
Called One80 Outdoors – its website is www.one80outdoors.com – the program is designed to share not only the wonder of being outdoors, but also the transformed lives of the people who tell their stories as they describe their hunts.
“It’s a for-profit venture,” Litton said. “We sell advertising; we give away a lot of things on the show, such as Mathews compound bows,” which retail for $1,200 to $2,000. Viewers are invited to call in for a drawing, and after getting information for the drawing, an Evangelism Explosion-trained call-taker invites them to take a survey.
In the last five years, more than 800 people have made professions of faith as a result of the show, Litton said.
“Most of our viewers don’t have a clue we’re a church,” the pastor said. “One80 is [code for] a transformed life, one turned around 180 degrees by Christ, which is the nature of the story that’s told during the program. We don’t directly share the gospel; we plant a seed about how Christ has changed a life.”