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By Marilyn Stewart, Regional Reporter
When Waylon Bailey, Louisiana Baptist Convention president, 2011-2013, and pastor of First Baptist Covington, presented to his congregation the 2020 vision for reaching Louisiana with the gospel, his members’ response was a collective, “At last.”
It was a plan they’d been waiting for.
“It was as if they were saying, ‘This is who we are; this is what we want to do; it may not be easy, but this is what we want to do,’” Bailey said.
2020, the cooperative statewide initiative to maximize Louisiana Baptists’ effectiveness in impacting lives for the gospel by the year 2020, is focused on reaching every people group and every generation through congregational revitalization, church planting, communication and collaboration.
Birthed at the 2012 Louisiana Baptist Convention Annual Meeting, the campaign was charted out by twenty teams of twenty people each that met and prayed, brainstormed and planned. When the commission met again together, team members shared the same concerns.
“We didn’t know what would happen, but when we came back together, the mission simply became clear,” Bailey said.
The 2020 vision became a bold, strategic initiative to reach multi-ethnic groups, children, and the generation of 13-33 year olds known as “millennials” through a ten-step approach known by KAIROS, or Key Actions in Reaching Our State.
Looking back over the process, Bailey said he sees God’s hand on the vision from the beginning.
“Our main finding was: reach the ethnic groups, reach the children, reach the millenials,” Bailey said. “It was as if God were saying, ‘This is what you were looking for. Now I’ve shown it to you.’”
While measurable results for 2020 are too early to tally, Bailey said the feedback has been “tremendous” and that pastors and churches are excited.
The seed for the 2020 vision was planted when Bailey met with executive director David Hankins prior to the 2012 annual meeting of the Louisiana Baptist Convention and a mutual desire to so something significant to impact Louisiana became apparent.
Spurred on by an article identifying millennials as the least churched generation in American history, Bailey said he realized he had a direct family link or personal connection with every generation – World War II generation, Baby-Boomers, Generation X, and today’s children – except the millennials.
Working to reach every ethnic group and every generation will mean the churches will look different, Bailey said. Already, a subtle shift has taken place. “We are now looking for people who don’t look like us,” Bailey said.
Bailey recalled the song he learned as a child in Sunbeams of God’s love for every person, “red and yellow, black and white,” and related it to the 2020 mission.
“When we are open to ‘red and yellow, black and white,’ when we are looking to influence the next generation, when we are seeking to reach the millennials, God is going to bless that effort because he was wanting to reach those people long before we recognized it,” Bailey said.
At First Baptist Covington, the change is visible.
Bailey said his church had prayed to “look like heaven” when members approached him wanting to use their talents and gifts for God. Programs such as Celebrate Recovery, Upward Sports, and an intentional outreach to families with special needs children has “opened the community” to them in a new way, Bailey said.
Utilizing everyone—of both genders, every ethnicity, every generation and age group—in positions of leadership and visibility is vital to becoming a multi-ethnic and multi-generational church, Bailey said.
“When we allow people to lead and be in front, we are giving out very subtle signals that ‘you are welcome here.’ This is not a baby-boomer church; this is not a white church; this is not a male or female church. It’s for everybody,” Bailey said.
The new approach is paying off. Recently, Bailey made a happenstance remark to a staff member about the changing face of the congregation. The staff member replied, “Yes, and it’s beautiful.”
The goals of KAIROS, a Greek word meaning opportunity or time, begin with equipping churches with a proven evangelistic church growth process and assisting churches with the development of a disciple-making process.
Biblical stewardship and support for the Cooperative Program and mission offerings, compassion ministries, church planting partnerships, mentoring networks and the utilization of multi-platform media strategy and social media, are part of KAIROS.
Prayer is key to reaching the 2020 goals, Bailey said.
“If we’re praying, we are the ones who are changed,” Bailey said. “There is something about when God does his work inside us that he also starts doing his work outside us.”
When asked what he hopes his church will look like in 2020, Bailey said he’s not as concerned what it “looks like” as what he hopes it truly will be: a congregation transformed by God and open to his will.
“If we do that, then the church will look like he wants it to,” Bailey said. “And that’s better than anything I can envision.”