Church Revitalization Glossary
• Legacy Church Plant: A church whose members decide to turn over leadership and become part of a new church.
• Church Property Acquisition: Strategic purchase of closed church property for use by new church plants.
• Mentor/Coach: Healthy church pastors serving as mentors to Legacy churches.
• Legacy Church Adoption: Healthy churches adopting Legacy churches to help them grow stronger.
and decrease the death rate of existing churches in the SBC.”
BIVOCATIONAL LEADERSHIP Scott Farmer is an executive at a local plas- tics company and a bivocational church planter. He had long been passionate about reaching people seemingly neglected by other local churches—like the poor and those with a troubled past. “I grew up in Cincinnati,” Farmer says.
“I grew up around people in the inner city. I did some inner-city work right out of college, working with some missions in downtown Cincinnati. It just always appealed to me. There’s so many needs in the inner city.” Farmer noted that within a one-mile radius of the Center of Hope the average annual income is under $20,000 for a family household. He believes the poverty in inner-city Evansville makes it easier to reach. “This community is easier to reach because they can accept the fact they have
a need, whereas people in the suburbs are more difficult to reach,” Farmer says. Farmer seems to be right. Two and a
half years into the new church plant and the church has been growing steadily. More than 200 people attended Easter services on the church’s first birthday. Now the church averages around 200 on a typi- cal Sunday morning. And people are com- ing to Christ, too. The Center of Hope has baptized 97 since launching in 2010. For many disenfranchised by the rest
of society, the church has provided a place to belong. Convicted of a drugs and weap- ons charge, one Center of Hope member became a follower of Christ in prison and has become a fixture at the church—sing- ing in the choir and reading poetry in worship services. “The first Wednesday night we met, he stood up and gave his testimony,” Farmer says. “Here’s this guy who just got out of prison, sitting next to a doctor from the suburbs, and they’re looking at each other saying ‘We’re really not all that different other than our pants are different. We’ve
11 Winter 2013 •
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