Nearly a year after an extreme makeover of its model for functioning as a church, North Side Baptist in Greenwood is discovering that senior pastor Jeff Lethco and his leadership team were right in their belief that “we can accomplish more by doing less.”
North Side’s leadership team, standing: Steve Watson, Jeff Lethco, Jamie Parler; seated: Travis Agnew, Ken Petrus.Lethco, who has served the Greenwood congregation for eight years, said he came to a realization that there were “too many irons in the fire” for the staff and members of North Side, which hampered the church’s effectiveness.
The new-look North Side is focused on its mission “to create environments and engage in activities that both encourage and enable people to become fully developing followers of Jesus Christ” – and, as a byproduct, the leadership team has been revitalized.
“We have created an environment where the staff is allowed to focus on those aspects of ministry that energize them and step away from those things that drain them,” said Lethco.
Lethco said that North Side, which has approximately 1,500 resident members and is constructing a $7.1-million worship sanctuary to seat 1,200, is now “operating from two values – simplicity and focus.”
The basic plan drawn up by a leadership team at a retreat last January divided North Side’s ministries among three “environments” – corporate worship, with services tailored to different age levels, tastes and special needs; community groups for discipleship training; and commission teams, where the mandate of Acts 1:8 is carried out.
“The process is simple and biblical,” explained corporate worship pastor Travis Agnew. “Jesus said the most important things we can do are to love God and to love people. We can’t make people do that, but we can aim all of our efforts at allowing people that chance. We do that by creating the three environments with corresponding goals of intimacy with God, interaction with other church members and an impact on the world.”
North Side offers 10 worship services, ranging from traditional to contemporary and tailored to different groups – 4- and 5-year-olds, grades one through six, the “20-something” group, junior high and high school students, and persons with disabilities or special needs. Most are held on Sundays, but others gather on Tuesdays and Wednesdays.
All Sunday school classes begin at the seventh grade, but Bible instruction is a vital part of the worship services and in the community groups, where, under the direction of “shepherds,” there is a “sharing of life together” as participants “grow in their Christianity.”
The congregation of North Side Baptist Church plans to move into this $7.1 million worship center in the spring.Explaining how church members fit into the simplified scheme of things, Lethco said, “We ask this of each church member, that he or she gives one hour each week to worship, devotes one and a half hours a week to one of the community groups and engages in missions all the time, but specifically each year with a trip or other mission project.”
An ongoing missions endeavor in Greenwood is Project Love, now in its fourth year for inner-city children – preschoolers through sixth grade – who meet at the church each Saturday, with an average of more than 100 participating in the day’s events.
North Side also has established a partnership with Nairobi, Kenya, which involves mostly evangelistic work. The Greenwood congregation also seeks to set up ongoing missions work in other parts of the country, similar to its involvement in Project Rebuild in New Orleans following the Katrina disaster.
“North Side has always been missions-minded,” said Lethco. “Now we are also missionary. We believe that each person should participate as well as support missions financially.”
North Side contributes 15 percent of its undesignated receipts through the Cooperative Program as well as annual support for the special offerings – Lottie Moon, Annie Armstrong and Janie Chapman.
Probably no one felt the impact of the changes at North Side more than Steve Watson, the commission team pastor, who joined the staff at North Side immediately after graduating from seminary and was youth minister for 21 years.
Not that change caught him by surprise. “When I first came to North Side,” he recalled, “the pastor at that time, Ron Davis, who now is director of missions in the Greenville Baptist Association, had created an atmosphere where change was encouraged because he wanted us to be more outwardly focused than inwardly distracted. When Jeff came in, he embraced that principle and expanded it.”
He continued, “In more than 20 years of student ministry, I constantly encouraged our teens to share the love of Christ all over the world. Now I’m challenging their parents to go as well. They are learning the importance of leaving their comfort zones and getting into the harvest zone, wherever that might be. This year, we are sending more adults out to mission fields than ever before in the history of our church.”
For Lethco, the element of trust lies at the heart of North Side’s success with its different way of doing church. “All that has been accomplished here at North Side has been built on trust,” he said. “The people trust the staff, and the staff trusts the people and each other.”
“Our effectiveness in accomplishing our mission,” he added, “has more to do with the quality of our people than it does with the quality of our staff.”
Having said that, Lethco praised his North Side staff as “incredible,” explaining, “We’re in process and still don’t have everything figured out.”
He is sure, though, that the church is more focused, more precise in the objectives of its ministry. “We would rather be a laser beam than a flashlight,” he concluded.