Caring, Communicating, & Contributing Pastor Adam Pierce – Liberty Baptist Church, Callahan, Florida Pastors may likely know the staggering statistics about the number of churches that close their doors every year. It also might be known that in comparison to that number, there are fewer and fewer churches being started here in the United States. What one may not know is that we play a vital role in correcting these issues in our country today. If you are pastoring a healthy, independent, Baptist church of any size, then you must be concerned about and get involved with church planting by investing in the Scriptural mandate to reproduce ourselves in others through the starting or restarting of churches. Each pastor must be personally concerned about this epidemic trend of churches falling by the wayside and engage in the effort to restore or plant a church. I believe that enough pastors are concerned to make a difference but may not know what to do from their pulpit or where to start in this daunting task. We are all incredibly busy growing our people which in turn grows our churches—but to what end? I heard someone say once, “We should not be churches of thousands but thousands of churches.” It is a local church in a local area that reaches the most people for the Lord. I certainly do not have all the answers or even the answers that may work for where you live, but I have been asked to share what our church is doing in the effort to turn the tide. Here at Liberty Baptist Church we are creating an atmosphere where our people are aware of the need for God to raise up laborers among us first and then provide us laborers in the absence of our own. This awareness comes through our desire to have an active missions outreach. Our missions approach is three fold: Caring, Communicating, and Contributing. We must first care enough to make a difference and, if need be, make changes. Paul wrote to the church at Philippi and said, But I rejoiced in the Lord greatly, that now at the last your care of me hath flourished again (Philippians 4:10). We want to be a church that flourishes in our care for missions and missionaries, which is church planting. We also want that care to flourish again and again without end. To truly care about something, you must be aware there is a need. This starts in the pulpit. God’s people will only be as concerned as I am Reseeding America – Spring 2017 7