First Baptist Church, Vernon, puts faith into action

First Baptist Church in Vernon put its faith in action in an effort to share the hope of Christ with its community.

Rather than gathering for a worship service, roughly 430 church members spread throughout their community, doing 19 projects and visiting 320 homes. The tasks, which included cleaning yards and building a ramp to make a home wheelchair accessible, were a way to connect with people in the area and share the gospel. Church members also prayed with their neighbors and distributed Bibles throughout the community.

Pastor Ben Macklin said the Faith in Action initiative to work in the community is part of the church’s commitment to the prayer, care and share principles of Texas Hope 2010, a Baptist General Convention of Texas initiative to share the gospel with every person in Texas by Easter 2010.

“Faith in Action gets us out of our church building and gets us out into the community to really administer Christ in the most effective way, which is to meet needs as a platform for evangelism,” Macklin said. “If all this is just some kind of a social experiment to make houses cleaner or fix a front porch or something like that, we can give that off to someone else. All of these are efforts and platforms to be able to share the gospel.”