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Believing for the Hard to Reach Areas: #ChurchPlanting in Avoyelles Parish
Before & after Life Point’s new Worship & Compassion Ministry Center was built in Mansura
Life Point Church in Avoyelles Parish is a favorite Louisiana church planting story of mine. Jacob Crawford started Life Point in 2010. They began receiving cooperative funding in 2012 and since then have baptized 104 in a traditionally hard to reach part of Louisiana. Life Point has grown from an average attendance of 65 in 2012 to 118 in 2013 to 165 this year. 75% growth since their first month of Cooperative Funding. Another remarkable thing about Life Point is that the congregation is 60% white & 40% African-American. That’s remarkable for almost any church in the South for one thing, but it’s also significant because it mirrors the racial makeup of the community. Life Point has used Compassion Ministry as a way to connect with people in the low income communities of Avoyelles, including thrift store, food distribution, Celebrate Recovery, Jail ministry & festival outreach. This year, construction was completed on a new Worship & Compassion Ministry Center in Mansura, LA. And now, as Life Point “rolls off” Cooperative Program funding, they are taking on the planting of a new church in the neighboring community of Plaucheville.
If anybody had said in 2010, that you could plant a church that would be 40% African-American & 60% white, & that church would grow to 200 in the heavily Roman Catholic, farming communities of low-income Avoyelles Parish, many would have doubted. But thank God Jacob & his team have kept believing in the power of the Gospel & today lives are being changed.
Connect with Life Point on Facebook. Get to know Jacob, especially if you’re planting in a rural area. And pray for Jacob & his team as they continue to plant seeds in Avoyelles Parish.
Listen to Jacob tell part of their story in his own words in these videos:
#ChurchPlanting Partnership Leading to Changed Lives in NE Hammond
In the process of a self-assessment, Ebenezer Baptist Church in Hammond faced the fact that a sizable population of African Americans near their church was unreached & that they had been unable to reach them for years. That’s when the pastor, Kent Newell, called Lonnie Tucker, Pastor of predominantly African-American Stillwater Baptist Church in Ponchatoula. Together they saw that what was needed was a new congregation. Stillwater sent Elltore & Tomesha Austin to began ministering in the area & Ebenezer opened its doors for a Tuesday evening Bible Study. Six months later, 65+ gather for Worship & Bible Study & lives are being changed by the Gospel.
Grateful for this partnership that blossomed out of the needs of the community & desire for unreached people to have a gospel witness. One congregation SENT qualified leaders for the work. Another congregation WELCOMED a new congregation onto its campus. More Great Commission, Church Planting Partnerships like these needed! Grateful for Stillwater & Ebenezer!
Lane Corley 