News Articles by Mark Clifton

I’m guessing you have a town like Chula somewhere around you. With a grand total of 200 people in population, Chula has a post office, a community center, a school, and not much else. I grew up about 15 minutes away in the mega-city of Chillicothe (population 9,100).

ALPHARETTA, Ga. (BP) -- Legacy church planting isn't limited to churches at the very end of their lives. Many churches find themselves with buildings far larger than they need even as they struggle to impact their immediate community in a meaningful way. They love Jesus and the Gospel. They love lost people, but they can't seem to crack the missional code of the people who live around them. They aren't ready emotionally to turn over their ministry to another entity.

Mark Clifton, national legacy church strategist for the North American Mission Board, sets forth two truths: "A dying church robs God of His glory. Yet it doesn't have to." Clifton recounts the merger of dying Birchwood Baptist Church with a growing church plant, LifeConnection Church in Independence, Mo.

A once-dead church can find new life and become an example of Jesus' transforming power, writes church strategist Mark Clifton. Clifton shares how that's beginning to happen at a church in Webster Groves, Mo.

A pastor enjoys the parallels between the Kansas City Royals' near-extinction in recent years and the struggles of the church he has led there. Mark Clifton reflects on how the Royals are again relevant in baseball and how Wornall Road Baptist Church is "reaching our community once again." But the last time the Royals even made the playoffs was 1985, the year my son Trenton was born. This year, 29 years later with the Royals back in the fall classic, his son, my grandson, Jackson, was born.