Church Plant Announcement – Aberdeen

The following was read at all services on Sunday, January 31, 2010 as information to  our church family.

David Hall: Ever since I have been a pastor here, I have witnessed this church’s passion for missions. We have always believed that God has called us to share the Good News about Jesus to our community and our world. This passion is reflected in our giving to missions, our response when needs arise, our community involvement, our mission projects and trips, and in the missionaries that we send out around the world. We have started a new service and helped plant churches because we want to reach as many as we can for Jesus. Today we want to share with you a special opportunity for our church. The staff and our convention have been talking about this mission opportunity for almost a year and we are now ready to unveil some specific plans today and over the next year. I believe that we are about to embark on a special journey as a church family that will stretch our faith, expand our influence and reach new people for Jesus. Since this vision was birthed in one of our staff members, Brian Watts, I want to give him an opportunity to share with you.

Brian Watts: 10 years ago, I surrendered my life to full time ministry. And as clear as my call was to ministry, I was also convinced that I was supposed to start a new church one day. So for the past 10 years I have prayed about and dreamed about church planting. Over my years at Oak Grove, the tug on my heart to start a new work has gotten greater and greater. I have attended conferences, read books on church planting and talked to any expert that I could.

I told David early last year that I believed that now is the right timing. I then shared this with the church at a business meeting last September. Since then, we have not shared much else with the church because I have been searching for locations, talking with our convention, meeting with the staff, and going through a rigorous assessment process which has brought us to this point today.

This assessment process included hours of tests, numerous phone interviews, numerous meetings, lots of evaluations, a large written proposal and a grueling 12 hour assessment interview with our convention. But praise God, just this week, I was approved by the Baptist Convention of Maryland/Delaware to be a strategic church planter. A lot of people have asked me where we are going to plant this new church. So, let me share a little bit with you about how I arrived at that decision.

Back in June (2009), I started searching for locations across Maryland and Delaware. I looked at Towson, College Park, Newark (DE), and Middletown (DE). After searching for a while on my own, I contacted our convention and spoke with David Jackson, who heads up the church multiplication division. I asked him to share with me some locations across Maryland/Delaware where they want to plant churches. He identified several locations including one spot right here in Harford County. He said “for the past three years, we have wanted to plant a church in Aberdeen. We believe that this is a strategic spot and we have been looking for the right leader. We are going to plant a church there; we are just looking for the right partner.”

At first, I didn’t think it was the right spot but I told David Jackson that I would pray about that location. For the next month, I prayed and did hours of research on Aberdeen. I shared the idea with David (our senior pastor). We committed together to pray about it for another month. And over time, I became more and more convinced that we were being called to plant a church in Aberdeen. So, we wanted to share with you this morning that we are going to be planting a new church in Aberdeen in March of 2011.

David, the rest of the staff and me have been praying about and planning for this exciting opportunity. We shared all of this recently with the personnel committee, finance committee, and the deacon body. All have responded with excitement and encouragement. We firmly believe that this is a great opportunity for us to expand our influence and reach new people with the Gospel. Over the next few months, we are going to be sharing more with you about the church plant. There will be so many opportunities for people to partner in this mission: through prayer, outreach events, financial support, planning, and training.

In addition, God might call some of you to go and be a part of this new work either for a short time or for the long haul. Please begin praying about how God could use you. Our local association is supportive of this and will be encouraging other churches to join us. In a minute David is going to mention one or two more specifics. But I want to answer a couple of really quick questions. First, why a new church? Do we really need it?

New churches are desperately needed all around the world and in the United States. We are currently losing ground. There are at least 200 million unchurched people in the US making America the fourth largest mission field in the world. During the last 10 years, combined membership in Protestant churches has declined 9.5% while the population has increased 11.4%. So, we are losing serious ground and statistics show that church plants are much more effective in reaching lost people than existing churches. We desperately need a wave of new churches in America. I also believe that healthy Christians reproduce and so do healthy churches. Jesus said “go and makes disciples of all nations.” Planting churches is a fulfillment of this command from Jesus.

Why Aberdeen? There are over 240,000 people living in Harford County. Less than 14% of these people attend church. So, we still need more churches in Harford County. About 25,000 people live in Aberdeen with many more in the close surrounding areas. We believe that Aberdeen is a location in desperate need of a strong church that blesses the community. Our convention has targeted this spot for several years because of BRAC which will bring more people to this area, because of continued growth in Harford County, and because of the need in the community.

How does church planting work? Church planting is done in many different ways but let me explain how this church plant will happen. We will spend the next year planning and preparing for the launch of this new church in 2011. Over the next few months, we will begin sharing the vision, praying, planning, finding a specific location, and building a launch team. Starting in the summer and throughout the fall, we will start having outreach events in the community, training events for our launch team, fellowship opportunities, and small group meetings. All of this and more will lead up to a public launch in March of 2011. Thank you so much for your encouragement and for your prayers for me and my family. Now, I want to leave it to David to share briefly what this means for Oak Grove.

David Hall: We have agreed to serve as the mother church for this new church plant. As part of our agreement with Brian and our convention, Brian will remain on staff at Oak Grove part time throughout most of this year. He will serve in his current capacity as minister to missions/ministry. At the same time, he will also be planning and preparing for this new church. His salary will be funded by money he receives for his church plant from our convention. We have agreed to pay for some of his expenses such as health care, mileage, and cell phone pending a positive vote by the congregation at our next business meeting on February 28. We will explain this partnership and answer questions at that time. We will also share with you regularly about the progress of the church plant and how you can be involved. There will be a need for people to go and be a part of this new work and there will be a need for people to stay and continue the ministry here at Oak Grove. If you have any questions in the meantime, please see Brian or me.  At this time, I would like for us to join together in prayer.