Your Impacting Lostness Team has spent this year slowly but steadily pursuing a strategy to address “Pockets of Lostness” in our area. The Baptist State Convention has identified 200 such pockets in North Carolina, meaning these are areas in our state with the greatest concentration of lostness. So far we have adopted two of the pockets in our area, centered in downtown Rocky Mount and one in downtown Roanoke Rapids. In these two pockets, a combined total of approximately 40,000 people self-identify as having no involvement in spiritual things. This total is about 70% of the population in these areas! Obviously, we can’t say that there is no need in our local area.
The goal is to see churches cooperatively working together to address this desperate spiritual need. So far our strategy has been two fold. First, we have called the churches to pray. In January of the year, over 800 people (representing almost 50 churches) came together at Englewood Baptist to pray prayers of repentance for our lack of unified Great Commission efforts and prayers for a burden and anointing to commence a focused work in these pockets. It was a wonderful demonstration of the Baptist family coming together to seek God’s forgiveness and favor.
Our second step was to co-sponsor a conference at Word Tabernacle on the topic of Courageous Conversations: Race, Redemption, and Reconciliation. This conference brought together a very diverse crowd of between 400 and 500 people from Baptist and other evangelical churches to discuss how we can put aside secondary differences and come together under the banner of Christ to get busy in demonstrating and proclaiming the gospel in Rocky Mount and surrounding areas. In a day when we are so divided in so many ways, the churches were reminded that the gospel is God’s method to bring us together. It was a very challenging day but a productive one as the diversity of the church was on display.
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We are still working to identify churches interested in partnering together in these pockets of lostness. In addition to the two pockets we've adopted, we've learned that there are several other smaller pockets in our area that need to be engaged. If your church is interested in learning more or in working with others to address this desperate spiritual need, please get in touch with our team. There is much to do and we always do better when we work together in Jesus' name.
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—Dr. Robin Fisher, Team Leader
