IBSA offers Renewal Weekends

IBSA has partnered with a North Carolina ministry to encourage a new movement of church renewal across the state. Church Renewal Journey weekends are a Bible-based approach designed to help people discover how God is working and to understand how they can joyfully live out their redemptive potential.

Highland Avenue Baptist Church in Robinson held a Church Renewal Journey Weekend in March. Pastor Dwight McDaniel likened the experience to a revival. Leaders divided members into small groups to discover their spiritual gifts, which will help further the church’s goal of “wanting to get more people involved and plugged in, serving in the community.”

“It pulled our church family closer together. It revitalized our church,” McDaniel said.

Most events begin on Friday evening with small group sessions. Saturday includes several small group and general sessions seeking spiritual renewal, with a break provided on Saturday afternoon.

Sharing action plans for evangelism

“We are blessed to have Bob Foy and his wife, Phyllis, along with North Carolina’s robust team of volunteers, helping us in Illinois,” said Scott Foshie, IBSA Health Team Leader. “I encourage every church to take advantage of this unique opportunity as we seek a fresh move of God in our midst.” The Foys were lay renewal coordinators with the North American Mission Board for several years before retiring and serving in a volunteer capacity through the North Carolina Baptist Convention.

Sunday concludes the weekend with team members leading Sunday school classes and worship services. The highlight of the process is the Sunday evening worship service, where church members share, evaluate, and celebrate what the weekend meant to them, and how they will take what they learned into their homes and personal marketplaces.

To learn more about having a Church Renewal Journey team at your church, e-mail ScottFoshie@ IBSA.org, or visit churchrenewal journey.org.

IBSA Evangelism Director Scott Harris hosted a series of roundtable meetings in May with pastors of churches leading our state in baptisms. The three meetings brought together leaders from the top-15 baptizing churches with worship attendance of three different sizes. Pastors in each group discussed ways their churches are sharing the gospel that result in salvations and baptisms.

“We are looking for ways to utilize the movement that these leading baptizing churches are seeing and how to harness it to help plateaued and declining churches with few or no baptisms to get traction,” Harris said. He pointed out that two-thirds of IBSA churches reported one or zero baptisms in 2022.

“We want them to start seeing some movement which we believe will breathe new life into these churches,” he said.

Pastors met in the newly renovated space on the first floor of the IBSA Building in Springfield. (See “living room” story on page 2.)

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