Why Grace Community Church!

My wife tells me that I am getting obsessive with the blog, but I reminded her that in her "nesting" pregnancy stage she cleaned the baseboards yesterday. I would say we are even but she is nine months pregnant and I am simply obsessing over the blog.

For over a year and a half we have been working on laying a strong foundation of Grace Community Church. All of the studies show that the best way to expand the Kingdom of God on earth is not through more seminaries or Bible colleges, nor through more evangelistic crusades, nor through more Christian radio stations, nor through bigger and bigger mega churches; but through new churches. All of those things are great and I would argue important, but the most important thing that churches need to be doing to reach the lost in our society is by starting new churches. I am proud to say that my denomination, the Southern Baptist Convention, is leading the way in this effort. Churches, especially older established churches, need to embrace this reality. I pray that pastors of churches will lead the way in understanding this and seek ways to start new Bible preaching, evangelistic, disciple-making, authentic churches that change communities.

I live in Denton County where about 40% of the people attend church regularly. That is a pretty churched community comparatively speaking. We are going to start a new church in the southern part of Austin, Texas where only 15% to 20% of the people attend church regularly. The church planting strategist at Hill Country Bible Church told me that when they planted a church in the area we are focusing on they ran across a grim reality. He told me that in this area of over 100,000 people that if every church was filled on a Sunday morning that there would only be seats for about 4,000 people! This is the south, this is Texas! There is a clear need in Austin, Texas for new churches!

The main way to reach the lost in a community is through new churches. New churches are not the enemy of other churches, the devil is the enemy. New churches provide another soldier in the trenches with the older more established churches. Austin, Texas is the second fastest growing city in America and is only 15% to 20% churched. Austin needs new churches.

We have found that around 90% of church starts fail in Austin. The group we are working with (Bluebonnet Baptist Association) has about a 75% success rate! We have found that one of the main reasons for church start failure is lack of needed funds and they are not evangelistic enough. We have extremely evangelistic people on our team and Bluebonnet will provide great accountability if we are not evangelistic enough.

We fill like we are a strong and flexible gameplan, we have great evangelists on our team, and God is clearly leading us to Austin. We have raised or have committed about 20% to 25% of our needs. We are off to a good start, but still need support. If you would like to be a part of what we are doing, comment to this post or visit our website at www.SouthAustinGrace.com. We now have a way to give financially through the website www.GracePartners.net.

In His Grace
Micah

P.S. The pic is of Ross and myself who are the lead pastors of the church plant. Nice ties huh? My tie is the college tie of Regent's Park College of Oxford University. Ross' tie is borrowed from his dad and tied by me.