PAVE African American Ministries launches new cohorts of pastors to learn revitalization and church health techniques

By Meredith Poe, contributing writer

Earlier this year, PAVE African American Ministries launched, with three new cohorts of pastors coming together to chart paths for revitalizing their churches. This is the first season of PAVE to focus specifically on revitalization in African American churches.

PAVE is a Texas Baptists Church Revitalization Strategy course designed to help pastors customize revitalization to their context. Pastors are placed in cohorts to be trained by a coach, equipped with resources and encouraged within a community of pastors.

“PAVE is all about discipling pastors in church health and church growth in a relationally rich environment,” said Jonathan Smith, director of Church Health Strategy.

Pastors meet once a month as a group, walking through the PAVE steps and discussing techniques for church revitalization. In addition, each pastor meets one-on-one with their coach to apply the course to their specific context.

“This is really the power of PAVE … these rich relationships that form where they start talking a common language around revitalization. That’s what’s making the difference,” Smith said.

Smith partnered closely with Oza Jones, director of Texas Baptists African American Ministries, to adapt the PAVE principles to fit the unique needs of the African American church.

“It’s been an awesome experience,” said one PAVE participant, Ronald Session, pastor of The Shiloh Church in Garland. “I have learned a tremendous amount of information that is relevant to our current situation, and it’s very easily adaptable to our context.”

This season of PAVE cohorts only recently began meeting, but these small groups of pastors will continue studying and growing together over the course of nearly two years.

“Those initial two days of learning, sharing, being vulnerable with each other and talking about where we need help were great,” said PAVE coach Deshun Avery, pastor of First Progressive Baptist Church in Lubbock. “We’re all transparent with each other … and that’s the place where our team started to come together. I’m excited about the connection of brothers that's in our cohort.”

Five seasons of PAVE cohorts have launched so far, drawing over 104 attendees. Smith shared the goal is to have more than 1,000 pastors trained in these PAVE principles by 2030. In November 2023, a PAVE cohort specifically geared for millennial and Gen Z pastors will launch and will work closely with Texas Baptists Pastors Common. Additionally, Smith is currently working with leaders from Texas Baptists en Español and Texas Baptists Intercultural Ministries to launch cohorts for Hispanic and Asian pastors seeking revitalization training.

The next season of PAVE African American Ministries is scheduled to launch this fall.

“Just this month, Texas Baptists counted 1,007 African American churches of our over 5,300 churches total," said Smith. "That’s a big piece, so it’s very important that we’re reaching this group with revitalization training to help their churches remain strong.”

To learn more about PAVE and Texas Baptists Church Health Strategy, visit txb.org/healthychurch.