Church Planting
In the Great Commission, Jesus essentially gave his disciples a church-planting imperative. By calling the disciples to go, baptize and teach, Jesus also provided a context for their disciple-making mission. This mission aimed at more than a person making a decision for Jesus Christ, but envisioned lives being enfolded into churches—living and worshiping communities of faith.
Church planting is still at the heart of Jesus' mission for the church in the 21st century and the primary purpose of Reach South Texas. It is our aim to plant churches that are soaked with Gospel life so that they embody God's grace in worship, community and mission.
It is critical to us that we plant churches that are deeply rooted in the truth of God's Word, contextually-aware and winsomely missional. We seek to plant churches that are neither against the culture nor blindly follow it, but which faithfully, graciously and courageously exemplify Christ's presence to our neighbors.
Church revitalization
In the United States, nearly 4,000 churches close their doors yearly. We believe that many of these churches can become fruitful again with the proper resourcing. Revitalization is a direct and deliberate effort to help churches in decline or churches that have plateaued. To that end, we seek to serve churches desiring revitalization through encouragement, prayer, and strategic planning.
"The capacity for preserving an organization, its values, and its mission lies in continuous renewal and regeneration. When any organization decides it will seek to save its life by building walls against change, that organization is destined to lose its life, its vitality." - Lovett Weems, Jr. - Church Leadership
Reach South Texas desires to be a part of the greater gospel renewal that all Christians should seek throughout the churches of the South Texas Presbytery.
Transforming South Texas
As important as church planting is, it is only part of a larger missional priority, which is the manifestation of the Kingdom of God and the broader renewal of the entire South Texas region. The prophet Jeremiah instructed the Israelites exiled in Babylon to "seek the welfare of the city... for in its welfare" you will find your own (Jer. 29.7). Similarly and in obedience to Christ, our churches are called to seek the welfare of their surrounding communities by engaging every area—the arts, academia, armed forces, health care, business and industry, politics and public policy—all for the cause of the Gospel. The overall transformation of South Texas is, therefore, an important goal of Reach South Texas.