Posted: 6/09/06
Church seeks to reach mobile
home park with the gospel
By Elizabeth Staples
Communications Intern
DENTON—Shady Shores Baptist Church wants to change the world, and it’s starting with the neighborhood around the church.
The congregation on the outskirts of Denton, which once was struggling to maintain 20 to 30 people, is seeking to share the gospel with as many people as it can in hopes of having a worldwide impact.
“We believe in supporting the work of missionaries all over the world by cooperating with other Southern Baptist churches to provide for their support,” Pastor Bob Joyce said. “But our mission mandate also includes reaching those in our own Jerusalem.”
The congregation’s first steps toward achieving its mission started when a member of the church told Joyce about a damaged and dangerous mobile home park and asked if Shady Shores Baptist could help. Joyce looked into the situation, and the church began raising money to bring a positive environment to the mobile home community.
| "My goal is to start a new church every year. We are always looking for ways to get outside of our walls and grow at the same time. My vision is to one day have a building for multiple churches to all be worshipping out of."
—Bob Joyce, pastor, Shady Shores Baptist Church in Denton |
Shady Shores Baptist brought in a new mobile home and developed a children’s outreach center in the park. The church used it to help children with homework and English-as-a-Second-Language classes. As more families came to the outreach center, the church decided it was time to start a congregation for the new believers in the area.
The church started Centro Christiana Vida Nueva for residents of the mobile home park, which now meets at Shady Shores Baptist’s facilities and serves 60 to 70 people each Sunday.
Encouraged by the success of the ministry in the mobile home park, Shady Shores Baptist hopes to start other churches. The core of what the church envisions as a multi-cultural congregation meets now in a Shady Shores church member’s home. Church leaders hope the congregation eventually will move to Lewisville.
Shady Shores Baptist also is supporting a new church called The Studio, which is trying to reach students in North Texas.
This diverse approach to ministry is helping Shady Shores Baptist Church reach more people for Christ. Joyce hopes this pattern will continue.
“My goal is to start a new church every year,” he said. “We are always looking for ways to get outside of our walls and grow at the same time. My vision is to one day have a building for multiple churches to all be worshipping out of.
“We exist to fulfill the Great Commission by living out the Great Commandment resulting in building great congregations.”
We seek to connect God’s story and God’s people around the world. To learn more about God’s story, click here.
Send comments and feedback to Eric Black, our editor. For comments to be published, please specify “letter to the editor.” Maximum length for publication is 300 words.