Saturday, May 7, 2011

Reaching the "Bible belt"?

Well, Foothills Baptist Church, I suppose you could say, kicked off our spring/summer outreaches.  Today we spent the morning volunteering at the Townsend Festival.  For those who live in the "big" city, it is a country festival with crafts, antiques, and the old country singing.  This was one of my first times back in the outreach field in about a year, yeah I have a job and we go shopping, and to other places, but some intentional outreach felt good on the one hand, but on the other there was something that I was thinking about while sitting there watching all this down home people enjoying a beautiful day.  I read all the "Missional" books and "how to reach so and so" and well I see a theme, they all focus on urban outreach.  Most if not all of the major teachers out there are in the big cities of America, thus they have a LOT of urban area.  When they refer to "urban" they are referring to most areas in the BIG CITY that are somewhat unreached.  Anyways, their approaches are great for doing what they do, and they of course have the resources to do it.  BUT, where are the how to(s) of reaching the several miles of road that are considered country back roads?  How do you reach the people who are not from the big city but are used to working with their hands and being raised on farms and working outdoors a lot.  Of course these are my initial observations from today, so I think I may write several posts on this in the next few weeks.  Right now I am just thinking of these things, because I see no articles or writings anywhere on some practical down to earth ways of reaching these people.  Hey, I am one of sorts, and so since this is where God has put us to reach the people around here, we need to find God's will on some of the best ways to reach these people that are not "BIG" city or "Urbanized".  If you have any thoughts on these feel free to email me or facebook me some thoughts, I would love to hear what others think.