A Five-Year Plan Helping Every General Baptist Church Reach Its Full Redemptive Potential

Beginning in the summer of 2016 General Baptist Ministries will begin a five-year initiative leading up to the year 2020. Turnaround 2020 intends to capture a renewed emphasis on evangelism and church growth so that every General Baptist church may reach its full redemptive potential. Because General Baptists believe in a general atonement—that Christ tasted death for all so that whosoever will may be saved—no General Baptist church reaches its full redemptive potential until everyone in its sphere of influence has heard, understood and responded to the gospel message.

Our strategy will be to produce and distribute turnaround resources for all, to present coaching opportunities to those groups who commit to in-person and/or video venue sessions, and to help mentoring for one-on-one intensive connections.

A Program and A Process

Turnaround 2020 will offer programming content readily adaptable in a variety of local church settings. At the same time Turnaround 2020 will start a process that, over time, will assist participating churches in their turnaround.

Why Turnaround?

Church growth experts continue to remind us that approximately 80% of local churches in the United States are either plateauing or declining in their attendance. A church plateaus when there is no change in the overall participation in its ministries. Plateau sometimes occurs when a group becomes closed to new members much like a private membership club that blackballs all new applicants. Plateau most often occurs when a church only reaches enough new members to replace those lost to death, drop-out or relocation.

If plateau continues for any appreciable length of time, decline becomes inevitable. A declining church counts fewer participants in the current year than were present in the prior year.

Plateau and decline are sometimes rationalized as the result of strict faithfulness to the gospel that discourages half-hearted followers. In many churches plateau or decline have become the new normal. No one seems to remember anything else!

Plateau and decline, however, most often results from the loss of connection to the community and the failure to communicate the Good News in understandable, meaningful ways.

Programming Overview

Beginning in 2016 the annual Mission & Ministry Summit will provide a platform for the distribution of Turnaround 2020 materials. Annually a planning notebook will be released at the Summit for free download or for hard copy purchase.

This annual plan book will include:

• Growth Strategies for a variety of settings such  as small, medium and large churches along with rural, suburban and urban or revitalizing and refocusing churches.
• Worship and small group resources patterned around a 40 Day Campaign will be prepared or identified. Every year at least one series of worship experiences and companion small group resources will be produced or identified. Worship resources will include preaching guides, creative elements, and music suggestions.
• Jump Start Strategies to address one or more of the essential church systems will offer simple, practical suggestions to help the interested church leader begin the process of turnaround.
• Leadership Examples. Woven throughout each plan book will be the stories and reports of turnaround as experienced in local General Baptist churches. These reports will not only identify successes but will also indicate what did not work in particular settings.

Will it take five years to turnaround?

Organizational experts suggest that it may take 7-10 years to change the culture of an organization like a local church. Many churches, however, find that turnaround does not take nearly that long if there is a common commitment to the new vision of turnaround.

The turnaround process benefits from the learning and experience of other churches that have achieved turnaround. Thus it is not unreasonable to expect that many churches will experience turnaround in 1-3 years.

For more information and for early copies of the Turnaround 20/20 plan book be sure to attend this year’s Mission & Ministry Summit in Bowling Green, Kentucky.