Reaching the Un-Churched: Pathway to Church Growth

When God Changes a Church

When God changes a church, it transitions to become
a church for the un-churched.

Greater Shiloh Missionary Baptist Church is a church with a rich historic past. It has maintained a presence within the community of Birmingham, Alabama, for 123 years. The past twenty-nine years has seen the church move through several distinctive periods. The eighties were a decade of decline, when the church's public presence almost disappeared from the radar screen. The nineties was a period of maintenance, and gave hints of renewal. The first decade of the new century the church was transitioning away from being an inwardly focused, traditional Baptist church, which had lost its evangelistic and missionary zeal. Well now into this second decade of the new century, the church has become an outwardly focused church, with an increased evangelistic heart for people who are marginally churched, and those who are un-churched. Greater Shiloh Missionary Baptist Church is now poised to reach people both locally and globally. We have become a megachurch that desires to be known more for its sending power than its seating capacity.

The genesis of this book was as a doctoral dissertation, completed for requirements at Louisiana Baptist University and Theological Seminary in 2006. The first edition of this book, published in 2010, chronicled the gradual but major intervention, designed to shift the thinking, understanding, and practices of Greater Shiloh Missionary Baptist Church. This second edition includes updates and offers greater clarity on the impact and progress of the research offered in the pages to follow. We trust that it will positively influence current and future leaders and laity alike.

The information contained here has already been proven and has propelled Greater Shiloh far out into a new future of community and global ministry. When applied, the principles discussed in this book, guided by the Holy Spirit, have the capacity to cause similar or even greater change in the life of most any church.