Good News stories in May tell of a small church which has new legs because of help from a sister congregation, of an effective outreach plan for Easter Sunday, about the huge number of youth involved in leadership training over the Easter weekend, and about a congregation whose picture graced the New York times front page.  Lots of encouraging good news!

Please remember to suggest good news stories to stafford.north@oc.edu.  Share your good news with thousands through Good News. 

Stafford North will be conducting an evangelism seminar on Saturday, June 2, at the Alvin Drive Church of Christ in Salinas, California.  Call 831.449.7211 for more information.

Also be making plans to attend the OC Lectureship on Sunday, October 7 through Tuesday, October 9.

by Stafford North

Over the Easter Weekend, I attended the Lad to Leaders/Leaderettes event in Dallas, Texas.  There were a thousand there and, including similar events in Atlanta, Nashville, Indianapolis, Memphis, and Orlando, a total of some 20,000 youth, parents and sponsors attended the Lads/Leaderette programs.

On the same weekend, Leadership Training for Christ was conducting similar events with three in Dallas, and others in Kansas City; Phoenix;  Indianapolis; Houston ; Mobile;  San Francisco, Rogers, Arkansas; Hickory, North Carolina; and Spearfish,  South Dakota.  They had an estimated total of almost another 20,000.

It is very good news that almost 40,000 of our young people and their parents/sponsors are engaged in programs to foster Bible knowledge and church leadership skills.  Some congregation not involved in these events have their own plans for developing their young people.  We need these youth to stay strong in the faith and be prepared to take on important roles in the church.  Both the preparation and the presentation part of LTC and Lads provides great preparation for these young people.

At these events, students compete in events such as speaking, Bible reading, puppets, Bible bowl, song leading, posters, art work, signing, bulletin boards, and choral singing.  In some cases, they get awards for memorizing a large number of Bible verses and doing service projects.

I was particularly interested in one group at the Lads/Leaderettes in Dallas.  They were all wearing tee-shirts with their church name on them—Lewis Street Church of Christ in Little Rock, Arkansas.  Andrick Todd, one of the sponsors, told me about their program.  This church of about 200 in attendance brought 31 students from 3rd to 12th grade.  Last year they came as observers and this year they began participating.  Some were …

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by Stafford North

The great majority of congregations within churches of Christ, as with many religious groups, are small.  And many of these smaller churches are struggling to survive.  Such was the case with the church of Christ in Hampton, Arkansas, a congregation which had declined to about twenty.  Although it once was larger, the usual factors have taken their toll—youth not returning, older members passing away, families with children leaving for a larger congregation with a more robust youth program, and the lack of something to get members excited.  Such circumstances can easily put a church in decline.

One Wednesday evening in January of 2012, Mike Parker, a member of the 1400-member Pleasant Valley Church of Christ in Little Rock, was hosting a Bible study in his home.  During the evening, one of those present received a phone call from his brother in Hampton saying that they had no one to preach the following Sunday and did he know of anyone who would be willing to make the two hour trip from Little Rock to fill the pulpit for them.

Parker, a Bible teacher at Pleasant Valley, said he would be willing to go.  And so began a process that is starting to revive the church in Hampton.  Now, a group of men from Pleasant Valley rotate by the month in going to Hampton to preach, and their local minister, Chuck Monan, is assisting them with their sermons.  The church in Hampton pays them for coming, some accepting it and others re-investing it in the work there.  But the connection has growing much beyond just Sunday preaching.

The Pleasant Valley congregation has committed $5,000 to helping the work in Hampton with the funds used primarily for regular ads in the …

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The North MacArthur Church of Christ in Oklahoma City, a church of 550, decided to use Easter Sunday of 2012 as a special Friend’s Day.  Their thought was that since many who do not attend church regularly want to go to church on Easter, they could capitalize on that by making that a special day to invite friends. 

Ty Hale, who works with evangelism at North MacArthur, reports that their plan for getting members to invite guests is to provide a slip of paper on which a member writes the name of someone they are going to invite.  The church then prepares a personalized invitation with the person’s name on it.  With this being done several weeks before the event, the member then gets the invitation with plenty of time to present the invitation and to have the opportunity to encourage the person to attend.  The church has found that when the member has something with the person’s name on it, it is easier for them to follow through with the invitation.

On Easter Sunday the North MacArthur congregation had 762 people in attendance with more than a hundred of these being guests.  Their previous high for a friend’s day had been 695, so they felt that their plan for the Easter event worked very well.

For follow-up with the guests, North MacArthur has an evangelism team of seven persons who actively pursue further contacts with the guests through various means.  Their first goal is to get them to come back to a church service one more time.  The team members watch for them and when they spot one of them, they make additional contact and seek to start an individual study with them.  In addition to this team, members working in the …

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