What does it look like to be a missionary in your hometown?
That’s what members of Lake Mystic Baptist Church in Bristol are learning to do. For the second consecutive year, the church has hosted “Love Liberty County,” a weekend-long event that is part revival and part evangelistic outreach.
The event, held in April, kicked off with a Friday night revival service at the church, where more than 100 people heard a message on the need for community evangelism from Robin Jumper, academic dean and professor of evangelism and missions at The Baptist College of Florida.
Children in attendance had their own special service, which included a bounce castle, ice cream bar and gospel message.
During the day on Saturday church members participated in varied community outreach projects, including a car wash, a yard sale, document shredding, haircuts, school cleanup, and gift bags for widows, all free of charge. Through these projects hurch members had gospel encounters with more than 100 families in their community in the Panhandle of Florida.
“As a church, we doubled our number of gospel conversations in one weekend,” said Cody Watson, pastor of Lake Mystic Baptist Church.
On Saturday evening church members celebrated with a community night at the local high school football stadium with food, live music, bounce houses and an evangelistic message from guest speaker David Burton, who has close to 50 years’ experience preaching and teaching the gospel.
The three-day event wrapped up at the church on Sunday morning with a message from Burton.
As a result of the weekend outreach, two people have been baptized, and the church has welcomed three new members.
“Our members worked diligently to make this event happen and see the gospel go forth,” said Watson, who also affirmed his wife for “doing so much behind the scenes, all while taking care of our two children with special needs.
“We all saw how God can do amazing things when we step out in faith. Every day leading up to the event, the forecast called for rain, which would have canceled our Saturday community night. As it turned out, God cleared the skies, and we were able to have all of our activities without interruption.”