Churches, associations 'rediscovering cooperation' via EKG strategy
NASHVILLE, Tenn. (BP)--Rather than continuing a myopic mindset of growing one's own church to the neglect of other needs, churches across the Southern Baptist Convention are catching on to the idea that advancing God's Kingdom often means partnering with a Baptist church down the street, Ken Hemphill said.
Hemphill, the SBC's national strategist for Empowering Kingdom Growth, reported that an associational model is taking root in several states as churches in local Baptist associations are studying the EKG process simultaneously.
"What's exciting about this is that both churches and associations are catching the vision that it's not about just growing our church, it's about assisting our sister churches," Hemphill told Baptist Press. "We're rediscovering cooperation, which I think is critical to the whole concept of Kingdom advance."
ROBERTSON COUNTY, TENN.
One example of the associational model, Hemphill said, is the Robertson County Baptist Association north of Nashville, Tenn., where Robert Tyson, the director of missions, led churches to participate in EKG together.
For a year, the Robertson association planned an EKG emphasis coupled with a missions celebration. They even wrote a manual to guide churches in implementing the initiative so everyone who wanted to participate would be on the same page. At the end of January, they had Hemphill lead an associational EKG kickoff rally, and more than 300 people attended.
"The next morning, I met with the pastors for two to three hours, just answering questions and helping them understand the process," Hemphill said. "It may have been the most effective associational strategy I've seen done where they have 37 of their 40-some churches involved in the process.
"What they saw it doing was knitting all their churches together in a similar strategy, a similar emphasis so their laymen would be talking about the same kinds of biblical stories and asking, 'What's your church doing with EKG?'" Hemphill said. "It creates sort of a synergy across the whole association where the Kingdom advance issue is more than a church growth emphasis. It becomes a Kingdom advance emphasis that I think is a healthier paradigm."
After the kickoff rally, the churches in the Robertson association delved into the 40-day "EKG: The Heartbeat of God" study written by Hemphill, and their initiative culminated in a missions emphasis where churches were encouraged to have missionaries speak about their work. Afterward, churches held community outreach events to put into practice what they had learned from EKG and the missionaries' visits.
"We thought that would add a positive influence to our region with the community noticing that many Baptist churches were involved, and it would help people understand the good side of who we are as Baptists," Tyson said. "Some churches are looking at what they can do next. Pastors have commented that the EKG part of the study had been very beneficial for them."
MIDLAND, TEXAS
Another place where Hemphill has seen an associational model at work this year was Midland, Texas, where First Baptist Church hosted an EKG rally and invited all the churches in their association, as well as some beyond.
Hemphill showed them how churches can tie the EKG emphasis into Sunday school, which is normally the first place leaders want to start in an effort to revitalize their churches.
"If we start simply with Sunday school, which is a particular strategy or methodology, often times you have kind of a resistance to change," he told BP. "Most churches have a tendency to resist change -- we don't want to start new units, we don't want to split our class.
"They saw this as a way of backing a little further back to deal with a bigger issue and that is, how does the church move from apathy to activity?" Hemphill said. "That's the whole strategy behind the EKG process. We take a church from where it is now -- whatever status that is -- and begin to get a spiritual ignition point, and then we move to a transformation of the thinking process and then from that we can talk about structure and strategy and style."
HINESVILLE, GA.
Another place where Hemphill has seen progress relating to EKG this year was at First Baptist Church in Hinesville, Ga., where he led a rally on Super Bowl Sunday evening.
"This is not exactly the night most people would have any kind of training event, but this church and the association, working in partnership, did a Sunday night EKG/Sunday school event for the churches of their association and had a full house," Hemphill said.
Immediately after Hinesville, Hemphill met in Norman Park with the directors of missions for the Georgia Baptist Convention.
"What they were most excited about was to see this associational model for developing a strategy which would bring all our churches together in a Kingdom advance mindset," he said. "I was able to share with them the Robertson association model and the tools they had used."
The day Hemphill spoke with Baptist Press, he was headed to Anderson, S.C., where he would lead a regional meeting sponsored by the South Carolina Baptist Convention, utilizing the "Making Change" stewardship material he wrote as part of the EKG emphasis. The next night, he was to duplicate the meeting in Charleston, and in April he'll lead two more in different parts of South Carolina.
'KINGDOM ACTIVITY 24/7'
Hemphill said both paradigms -- the association-sponsored and the state convention-sponsored -- have been at work across the SBC. For instance, Louisiana Baptist leaders are working to enroll up to 1,000 churches in a statewide EKG emphasis.
"Where some of the associations are picking up on it and knitting all of their churches together, others are being strategized by the state convention," Hemphill said. "Then of course it goes on to the association. Both models seem to be working quite well and it's related to what seems to work best in a geographic area."
However they're implemented, Hemphill said his office has received an abundance of positive feedback related to the EKG studies, which include EKG: The Heartbeat of God and Making Change. A third component, "Eternal Impact," has just come out in book form, and a DVD and study guide will be available by the SBC annual meeting in June.
"We're getting stories where God is using EKG to make them sensitized to Kingdom activity 24/7," Hemphill said. "The most common comment I get from laypeople is the idea of being a moveable possession. Most folks, I think, go to church to do Kingdom activity, and they've never really thought about Kingdom activity happening every day around them."
One specific story Hemphill recalled is a church in North Carolina that gave away one of their historic buildings after studying EKG. The church had moved their original building to a site across the street about 25 years ago in order to make room for a new sanctuary, he said.
"It sat there and was used once a year on anniversary Sunday," Hemphill said. "They'd go over there and walk through and have a picnic out in front of it. The church just voted to give that building to an international church, and they've got probably 65-70 internationals meeting across the street.
"That's one church that decided, 'If we're going to be Kingdom-centered, we don't need to keep a building over there sitting vacant a whole year, and its history is not as important as its future.' It kind of got this Kingdom strategy enmeshed in the whole question of 'What are we doing as a church and why are we preserving an old building when we can use it for the Kingdom?'"
Erin Roach is a staff writer for Baptist Press. For more information about Empowering Kingdom Growth, visit www.empoweringkingdomgrowth.com.
