NORTH ST. LOUIS – Michael Byrd knew the Baden community in North St. Louis needed a church, but not just any church would do. It needed to have sound doctrine. and it needed to have a gospel focus.
“God has grieved our hearts for Baden,” he said. “He was grieving our hearts for church planting before we even knew the lingo. We wanted to lock arms with someone who could train us in the way to go. For us, doctrinally sound and centered on the gospel, that was the SBC.”
And just like that, Faith Community Bible Church began to take root in Baden two years ago.
In church, without the gospel
Byrd is St. Louis born and bred, and grew up attending church with his grandparents, but said he never heard the gospel.
“If I did, I didn’t understand it,” he said.
When he was 18 years old, he ended up going to another local church on a whim and was drawn to the choir, but he still missed the central message of Jesus. Battling so many issues in his life, a friend finally pointed out to him that what he was missing was the gospel.
“Initially I thought he was crazy,” Byrd said, “until the Lord began to convict me and I had to respond to the gospel call in my living room. I haven’t turned back since.”
“Like ‘The Jeffersons’”
As he began to grow and dive deeper into God’s Word, his heart began to break that there were no doctrinally sound, Bible-believing churches in the urban neighborhoods that engaged and ministered to the community. Baden is – by Byrd’s estimates – 98 percent African American and though it was once a thriving German community, it is now dilapidated with a closed down school, boarded up business and more prostitution and drugs than opportunity.
“There’s a lot of kids there and people who want something different, but don’t know what different is,” Byrd said.
Even those that were ministering in the neighborhoods lived out in the suburbs and didn’t stick around long enough to build any relationships, Byrd said.
“It was like ‘The Jeffersons,’” he said. “They moved on up. They would drive in, do what they had to do on Sundays, and then rush right back out before the streetlights turned on.”
So Byrd and his wife, Traci, who is originally from Baden, resolved they would be the ones to live in one of the most violent and poor communities in St. Louis and to bring sound doctrine and gospel focus along with them. For the past two years, Faith Community Bible Church has been just that.
Crossover
Byrd asks for prayer that God would send His spirit out before the church as they attempt to minister to a broken and lost community.
“If we don’t have that, we’re just like dogs chasing our tail,” he said.
Within the church, Byrd is looking for faithful, godly leaders to rise up.
“We need someone to come along side of us and not only go out and evangelize, but carry out the church’s mission to engage the community.
Byrd said he also hopes Faith Community Bible Church will be selected as part of Crossover, the evangelistic thrust that bring in thousands prior to the Southern Baptist Convention that this year takes place in St. Louis.