By Tony Hudson/NAMB
EDITOR’S NOTE: This year’s Week of Prayer for North American Missions is March 1-March 8 and is focused on the theme: More Than a Gift and the theme verse of Ephesians 3:20-21. The emphasis spotlights the spiritual needs and ministry taking place on the North American mission field leading up to the annual Annie Armstrong Easter Offering (AAEO) for North American Missions. All gifts given to the offering support missionaries and resources on the mission field. The AAEO provides half of the annual funding for the North American Mission Board. Gifts to the Annie offering can be given through local Southern Baptist churches or online at give.anniearmstrong.com. This year’s goal is $80 million.
MARRERO, Louisiana (NAMB) – They didn’t know how much longer they had left. But they knew it wasn’t long.
“It was bad,” Linda Morrow says. “We had no money, no people. We were just barely getting by with a handful of senior citizens.”
Baptisms are a sight for sore eyes for the small handful of people who were once trying to keep Ames Boulevard Baptist Church open in Marrero, Louisiana. “They’d had almost no baptisms in the last 20 years,” says church planting missionary Troy Gause. Not long ago, Troy joined forces with the struggling congregation to replant Cross Community Church. “Now, two years in, we’ve baptized 22 people,” he says, “and this place is alive again.” NAMB photo by Ben Rollins
It’s still hard for Morrow to talk about what it was like several years ago, back when she was one of the last surviving members of Ames Boulevard Baptist Church in Marrero, Louisiana.
“I’d been here since 1971,” she says. “My whole life was wrapped up in this place, and I never imagined it might close. But that’s exactly where we were headed. It was heartbreaking.”
It should come as no surprise, then, that when she and the rest of Ames Boulevard Baptist Church’s elderly remnant reached out to Troy Gause at GT&C Lawncare, they had no idea they’d finally found their way forward. They were, after all, just looking for somebody to mow their grass.
“They called asking if I could come take care of their property,” Gause says. “That’s how I learned all about Ames Boulevard Baptist Church and the community of Marrero, Louisiana.”
Leave downtown New Orleans, cross the Mississippi River on the Crescent City Connection bridge, and Marrero, population 31,866, is one of the communities on the south side of the city.
New Orleanians like Gause call it “the West Bank,” and even though he lived just across the river, when Ames Boulevard Baptist Church called and asked him to come mow their grass, Gause knew nothing about Marrero.
“Whatever side of the bridge you’re from, that’s the side of the bridge you stay on,” he says. “I was from the East Bank, and so the West Bank is just somewhere I never went—until I had to.”
It couldn’t be helped—when Gause began mowing the grass at Ames Boulevard, he also got to know the people, the church, and the rapidly changing neighborhood surrounding them.
“Back in the ‘60s, when Ames Boulevard Baptist Church first began,” Gause says, “this neighborhood was 90% White. The church grew fast and got pretty big. But then a couple of years ago, all kinds of different people—Hispanics, Vietnamese, African Americans—began moving in.
“And then, well, it’s a story we’ve probably all heard before—the community changed, but the church didn’t.”
Replanting was never on Troy and Chanel Gause’s radar. “In replanting, you’re bringing a new congregation into a dying church that needs revitalization. That was never our plan.” But then God changed their plan. “We stumbled across a handful of elderly saints who were hungry for the excitement of what their church used to be. And we just couldn’t say, ‘No.’” NAMB photo by Ben Rollins
Every year, hundreds of Southern Baptist churches cease to exist, and according to Gause, Ames Boulevard Baptist Church was “probably just a couple of months away” from adding to that number.
That’s why when the church hired him to mow their grass, it was the happiest of all accidents, because back then, “Troy Gause, Landscaper” was also “Troy Gause, Bivocational Church Planting Missionary.” He and his wife, Chanel, had just launched a new work on the other side of the river and, coincidentally or not, were looking for meeting space.
“We started our plant in a house, but outgrew that pretty fast, so we’d been praying about finding somewhere else we could go. I asked the people at Ames about renting their fellowship hall, and they said, ‘Sure, but first, let’s have a joint worship service, so we can get to know each other.’”
Gause still remembers the date: September 11, 2022. “Something happened in that service,” he says. “We all just fell in love with each other and sensed God calling us to do something together.”
After months of meetings, Ames Boulevard Baptist Church and Gause’s church plant team decided to join forces and replant an entirely new church.
“I’ll be honest, at first it was really hard,” Morrow says. “I’m old and kind of set in my ways, and doing something new meant feeling like we had to change almost everything around here. But we all wanted the same thing—we wanted to reach our community—and in the end, that’s really all that mattered.”
Gause never planned on being a church replanter. But looking back, he now realizes God had better plans than he did.
“When we first started with church planting, we thought we were going to have to grow everything from the ground up,” he says. “But God said, ‘No, I have something different for you.’ He placed us here with a handful of elderly saints who were hungry for the excitement of what their church used to be. And what we’ve experienced here has blown our minds.”
Now, the sign outside the building says, “Cross Community Church.” And inside the building, “the excitement is back,” Gause says. “We had 22 baptisms our first two years. We’re growing like crazy, and old folks, new folks, and even people out in the community are seeing how God is powerful enough to raise a church from the dead. Yeah, now, everybody knows God’s definitely not done here.”
Troy Gause’s church planting journey turned out to be much different from what he had originally anticipated. “When we first started, we met in a house,” he says. “We thought we would have to grow everything from the ground up. But God said, ‘No, I already have a place reserved for you.’” NAMB photo by Ben Rollins
The Annie Armstrong Easter Offering® provides half of NAMB’s annual budget, and 100 percent of the proceeds go to the mission field in North America. The offering is used for training, support and care for missionaries, like Troy and Chanel Gause, and for evangelism resources.