Cornerstone Baptist Church ready to baptize upwards of 63 people
SEDALIA – For Cornerstone Baptist Church here, God is moving in the hearts of 16 newly baptized people. These people ranging in age and race were baptized at Sedalia’s Middle School pool May 27.
Cornerstone was slated to baptize 63 but several decided to wait until Pastor Rusty Thomas recovered from a tonsillectomy he went through May 25. In his stead, Jerry Field, Missouri Baptist Convention state church planting director, conducted the special service for the 16 people to be baptized. Thomas added some comments on how this came to be.
“These people have been reached through coming to church and through us going out using the Faith Evangelism Outreach. It is unbelievable.” Thomas said. “We know that it just has to be God’s hand upon it. It has been pretty incredible to watch it happen.”
Cornerstone is located right off the main drag in Sedalia in an old Aldi’s grocery store. It is one of the only churches to have power doors and meat freezers in its sanctuary. Leadership has been the key to the church’s rapid growth, according to Thomas.
“We have seen a ton of people step up in terms of leadership within the congregation and we believe our purpose is to know God and to make Him known,” Thomas remarked. “It has been pretty overwhelming to see the response of the people that have really taken that to heart to be what they believe God’s purpose in their life is and to see them take ownership of the fact that it is our responsibility.”
One key to Cornerstone being able to reach out to 300-340 people per week could be the variety of their services. The church has one service at 7 p.m. Friday and two on Sunday morning. And, a new building is coming.
“They are digging the hole right now and the concrete should get poured next week, I hope,” Thomas said. “We are in the process of building this 12,000 square feet building, half of which is two stories.
“We are still going to carry on three services because we do not want to see God quit doing what He is doing. Our next step is to start a Bible study called Equip on Wednesday night. We are trying to team up evangelism with discipleship because you cannot have one without the other. Starting in January, 2007, we are going to have a program through Equip that is going to take 62 weeks to complete. When they go though those 62 weeks we want them to grow into Great Commission Christians. So we want to multiply people that are doing this same thing some of our folks are already doing.”
The idea is to produce true disciples who have been trained properly.
“We want to be people that not only know who God is, and know what we believe, but think about how they can share this love of God with other people,” Thomas said.
Thomas hopes that his church’s efforts can help spark a revival.
“We are praying for other churches, that they will get to experience some of the same things we are experiencing,” Thomas said.