Greetings from the Lord's Church in Bastrop, Louisiana

My wife and I were so blessed to be able to present an evangelism seminar in early April 2018 with the Bastrop church of Christ in Bastrop, Louisiana. What a phenomenal group of Christians who meet there. Most of us have visited congregations where as soon as you walked into their midst you sensed they are a great group of people; this is Bastrop! They are located in northern Louisiana so if you are ever in that area and looking for a place to worship I highly encourage you to go there. Why am I so excited about Bastrop? It begins with their shepherds and permeates through the entire membership which suggests "influential leadership." Without solid leaders there is not much of a chance of a united congregation, harmony in all things, or joy that comes from our God.

The brethren were so much fun to be around because they are spiritual-minded and hungry to find their place in the church, especially in evangelism. When we present a weekend seminar, it begins on Friday from 7-9 pm, Saturday from 9-2:30, Sunday morning class and the sermon. Our arrival there was met with a powerful storm on Friday afternoon which canceled the Friday evening session. We stayed with Bob and Sheryl Turner and around 5 pm, it was decided that the evening event should be canceled due to the storms. Bob, Sheryl, Michelle and I spent a while determining how Saturday should proceed. Unfortunately some of the Friday night session was to be cut out to condense it into Saturday. That isn't exactly what happened. We did almost the entire two days sessions on Saturday and went until after 4 pm. Every member except a couple stayed the entire time! I was so impressed with their hunger to learn more about the Bible timeline we usually use to teach souls, the way they could use it and the many questions afterward. In addition to the spiritual enrichment, we had laughs a plenty with them; you cannot laugh and enjoy being around folks you've met for the first time unless Jesus has had an impact!

Michelle and I also had extra time to have conversations with Bob and Sheryl during the rain-out. We had met Bob the previous March when he came up to Waterford, MI to present a leadership seminar. We packed our community room with men from 11 congregations in our area and all of us found it to be fantastic and eye-opening. I was blessed to be able to share some time with Bob and describe our evangelism program and it was from that conversation where our Louisiana seminar came from. I learned more of the information behind his leadership project and was greatly impressed with the solidness of its foundation. It is still a work in progress and in the very near future their website which is currently under construction, leadership-project.com, will be up and running. In our conversations we agreed that many problems face the church today. If every congregation had two things in place it would become a force to be reckoned with, solving so many of these problems. These two items are "solid Biblical leadership" and "sustainable evangelism." The leadership being solid creates an environment of unity, growth and development of its flock where God has blessed them. This, in turn, creates a harmonious environment which is so attractive to the world; the world cannot provide this! Sustainable evangelism is now possible because the wonderful way in which we love each other is shared with our friends and visitors when they come among us. These go hand in hand and both are required for church growth.

Now, I am not a huge fan of building buildings just to build a new building. I have seen too many congregations do that and it becomes the end all, not a necessity for growth. Bastrop is building a new building right off the main highway and is hopeful to open late this year or very early in 2019. They have outgrown their current place which is in a location that I would describe as "off the beaten path." This is going to be a huge boost to them because instead of a handful of cars passing their building daily they will now have thousands! They have a wonderful influx of fantastic, evangelistic brethren place membership recently so their current facility has very little room for growth. With the great leadership in place there, their desire to grow personally and numerically, their latching on to the BTK model of evangelism where we place members where God has blessed them, it is with excitement we praise what God has done there! I am hopeful that, in some small way, Michelle and I can be there for their opening of the building to share and give in any way we can.

I must mention my new friend, Devin, whom I met at Bastrop. What an inspiring 12 year old young man. He was willing to read any scriptures I asked him to during the seminar and did it very well! He came up front with me on Saturday and let me use him to illustrate a point visually. It was a blessed moment when as part of his role playing he was instructed to yell at me to act how someone might respond to the offer of the Gospel. When it came time for him to "yell at me" he started, then stopped and said, "I can't yell at you; I can't do it!" I could have cried at how this special, very special young man responded. I hugged him and commended him for being trained by his grandmother to have a such a disciplined heart of sweetness. Devin will be going to Bear Valley and taking part in a young preacher program there. If you visit Bastrop, ask for Devin and meet this wonderful young man.

Please email us and see if there is something we can do to aid you and your congregation in these two areas. I have lived and seen the results of the bringing, teaching and keeping aspects of evangelism. I have met, been a part (attendee) of the leadership seminar, and met the man behind it and say with out hesitation it's wonderful! You may email Bob at bturner@wetrainpreachers.com for his insight regarding leadership. You will not be disappointed.

I close this blog with the hope it will help you soon or in the near future. May God bless all of us as we lead and evangelize.