SBC Life Articles by Sara Shelton

WOODSTOCK, Ga. (BP) -- The more than 2,000 church planters, pastors and ministry leaders attending the Send North America Conference at First Baptist Church in Woodstock, Ga., brought with them what is often considered one of their greatest assets in ministry: their wives.

WOODSTOCK, Ga. (BP) -- The more than 2,000 church planters, pastors and ministry leaders attending the Send North America Conference at First Baptist Church in Woodstock, Ga., brought with them what is often considered one of their greatest assets in ministry: their wives.

LONDON (BP) -- Bill and Lucy Pat Curl have been married for more than 50 years and had retired from international missions, but that didn't stop them from pursuing their own unique calling to the Summer Games.

LONDON (BP) -- Bill and Lucy Pat Curl have been married for more than 50 years and had retired from international missions, but that didn't stop them from pursuing their own unique calling to the Summer Games.

NEW YORK (BP) -- When pastor Freddy T. Wyatt arrives at his New York City church plant and sits down in his office every day, he looks out the window. There, on the side of the Broadway Plaza Hotel, is a four-story billboard that is home to ads for products like Coca-Cola and Vitamin Water. The Gallery Church has been at the corner of 27th and Broadway for nearly three years and, every few weeks when the advertisement changes, members of the congregation can't help but notice. When Wyatt sat down at his desk and let his eyes drift to the billboard in early April, he was shocked at what he saw -- a new ad for Vitamin Water, a brand of Coca-Cola, featuring a half-naked woman with the phrase "xxx you're up" covering her chest, promoting a flavor of the drink called XXX. "The billboard took the breath out of me, not in a good way," Wyatt recounted. "I had begun to look forward to the different ads each month, but this one stopped me in my tracks. It broke my heart." Wyatt thought of the men and women in Gallery Church who would see this ad every Sunday as they returned home. "How can they stay focused on the truth just presented to them in church when they walk outside to face a four-story distraction?" He thought of his children, two young sons and a daughter. What message was this going to send them? "I was brokenhearted that my daughter, after hearing the message that she is loved and valued by God will walk out the doors of her church only to receive another message by the four-story billboard. It's telling her, 'If you look like this or take your shirt off or tease men, then you'll be valued.' I'm sure this isn't the goal of the company -- to degrade women and tempt men to do the same -- but this is exactly what the billboard does." With this in mind, Wyatt took to Twitter. He reached out to both Coca-Cola and Vitamin Water with his thoughts about the billboard, calling on them to take action and remove it. His messages simply read: "@cocacola @vitaminwater I'm a pastor in NYC & u just put this larger than life garbage across from @GalleryChurch." "@cocacola @vitaminwater On behalf of the families in NYC that are seeking to raise respectable & wholesome families, take it down." "I didn't mince words," Wyatt said. "I was angry and brokenhearted and I wanted them to know what message they were sending in using such a disrespectful, sex-sells strategy for their ads." To Wyatt's surprise, less than 24 hours later, on April 4, a rep from Vitamin Water Tweeted him back. "We'd love to discuss your concerns, Freddy," the rep's Tweet said. "Can we call you @GalleryChurch or can you send us your contact information?" Impressed by the prompt and courteous response, Wyatt attempted to get in touch with the rep. They spent the day playing phone tag, unfortunately missing one another and never getting the chance to talk. The next day, Wyatt arrived at the Gallery Church, sat down in his office and looked out the window. There, where the explicit ad had stood four stories high, was an empty billboard. After four tweets and a couple of voicemails, Vitamin Water had removed the ad.

NORWICH, Conn. (BP) -- Few people understand doing whatever it takes to reach people for Christ better than Shaun Pillay.

    When Aaron and Carmen Coe started Gallery Church, situated in the heart of Manhattan, they had no idea of what the Lord had in store for them and their vision. Within its first year, their first church plant grew to nearly two hundred in weekly attendance and started the work of planting two […]

EDITOR’S NOTE: Oct. 9 is World Hunger Sunday for Southern Baptist churches. Since 1974, Southern Baptists have fought the problem of hunger through their World Hunger Fund. One hundred percent of every dollar given to the fund is used to provide food to undernourished people all over the world — 80 percent through the International […]

NEW YORK (BP)--The world is watching New York City. Home to Broadway, Wall Street, Times Square and Rockefeller Center, it is the epicenter of culture, fashion, media and finance in the United States -- perhaps even worldwide. In 2010, Forbes Magazine named New York the city with the largest global impact and influence in the world. With more than 8 million people in New York City and more than 22 million in the metro area, it is the largest city in the United States and the third largest metro area in the world. Imagine what the nation might look like if its most influential city found its greatest influence in Christ. This is the motivation driving Southern Baptist church planters to reach New York City for Christ. The North American Mission Board is launching its first Send North America city emphasis -- Send North America: New York City -- Sept. 30. Send North America is NAMB's strategy to mobilize and assist churches and individuals in hands-on church planting in 27 cities throughout the United States and Canada. Through Send North America, NAMB will come alongside Southern Baptist churches that are not directly involved in church planting and help them become more hands on. And NAMB will partner with Southern Baptist churches already planting churches to help them increase their efforts. "Planting in New York City holds tremendous potential for impacting the advance of the Kingdom worldwide," said Steve Allen, NAMB's lead church planting catalyst for the NYC Tri-state area. "Church planting here enables us to reach people who influence the rest of the world. That's huge for the spread of the Gospel." But church planting in New York City is no easy task. The city is marked with diversity, as 36 percent of the population is foreign born. These people bring with them their own cultural and religious backgrounds. Though 83 percent of New Yorkers living in Manhattan are affiliated with some form of organized religion, only 3 percent regularly attend evangelical churches, according to a recent study by the Values Research Institute. There is a disconnect from Christianity in New York City, and as a result, church planters face the difficult task of breaking into these diverse cultures and presenting the truth of Christ to a skeptical population. "Receptivity toward the Gospel is not lower in our region -- just slower," Allen said. "Church plants in the area will typically require more time to develop." This slower receptivity is perhaps the greatest challenge for planters in the Northeast. They have come to see that building relationships is the key to evangelism. In order for this to happen, however, planters have to make a more arduous commitment to dig in their heels and be patient in the slow process of church and community growth. Freddy T. Wyatt, pastor of the growing Gallery Church, planted in 2006, echoes this sentiment. "It's tough. The Northeast often requires years of investment to draw the same size crowd that a really good mail campaign might draw in the South," Wyatt said. "But on the positive side, this means that churches planted in the city are usually the result of solid evangelism and relationships -- not marketing."

NEW YORK (BP)--How do you help reach North America -- perhaps even the entire world -- with the Gospel by planting one church? For church planters Won Kwak and Freddy T. Wyatt, it was simple: Start with New York City.