EDWARDS—Daniel Yoder, 31, pastor, Colony Baptist Church, thinks that he may have stumbled into the key to church growth.
He is preaching against sin.
His numbers are going through the roof. How would you like to see your church attendance rise from 52 to 67 to 76 to 85 to 92 to 110 on Easter Sunday?
“We have lives being changed where the light bulb comes on every single week and somebody goes to the altar weeping because they know they need to change something in their life,” Yoder said. “People are seeing themselves for who they are, and now they know what they want, which is Jesus.”
Bob Loggins, Missouri Baptist Convention (MBC) prayer and spiritual awakening specialist, visited the church Jan. 9-12 and suggested to Yoder that he preach against sin. So far it is working.
“So many people are concerned with offending people,” Yoder said. “We all have sin in our lives. We’re all sinners saved by grace, and every week there’s some area of our life that we need to confront. The more we confront, and the more things that we change, the more Christ-like we become.”
Yoder highly recommends that pastors preach on things like tithing, gossip, slander, backbiting, and sexual immorality. He has discovered how pastoral confrontation leads to life change in the people.
He also knows the value of hard work. Colony Baptist, which sits between Warsaw and Climax Springs in Benton County, got after it the week before Easter. Church members knocked on 300 doors and gave out Bibles, an invitation to church, a CD with a salvation message, and various other items meant to uplift God. The huge crowd on Easter Sunday was a rewarding sight.
“The Bible is all we need,” he said. “Jesus is all we need. The Spirit is all we need. Prayer is all we need. It is that simple.”
Yoder is a young pastor. He is not 41. He is 31. He is both young and old in that he has not contextualized himself to the point where his missional mindset, which is sometimes called the “next generation” paradigm, has become his one and only DNA.
“The most influential people in my life have been my grandparents,” he said. “I believe that the backbone of every church is the senior adults. They’re the ones who have lived life. They’re the ones who should mentor my generation.”
Loggins has noticed that there have been eight salvations at Colony Baptist and a spiritual climate where all families are reviving.
“There are only two generations—the saved and the lost,” Loggins said. “There are those who are on their way to heaven, in love with God, and those who are rebelling against God.
“Jesus Christ was 33 years old. At that time, 33 was a pretty hefty age. If that’s true, why would little kids want to come and hang around an old man? Why could David, as a young boy, handle the giant, if he wasn’t capable to deal with spiritual matters? Here you had grown men who were bigger than David, who could have probably handled Goliath, but their problem was they had a generation of disobedience in their spirit, and David had a generation of obedience.
“So there’s only two generations, and the more we keep sub-dividing ourselves in the body of Christ, the more we create a marketing analysis, trying to market various segments of how populations are to be attuned to … the Gospel tears down the walls of division! The curtain has been rent. The veil has been torn. Jesus Christ is the answer. Preach Jesus. Teach Jesus. Live Jesus. Demonstrate Jesus. Age doesn’t matter!”
Colony Baptist is 80-90 in Sunday worship largely because its main families have been very biblical. Yoder, who began as pastor in November 2007, has benefitted from this.
“We are seeing lives changed,” he said.
ALLEN PALMERI/associate editor
apalmeri@mobaptist.org