Heavy rain, dangerous lightning, tornado warnings and, in some places, flooding buffeted metro Indianapolis during most of Crossover’08, but by afternoon the sun emerged and local and visiting Southern Baptists were out telling others about the Son.
Nathaniel Rigney, 10, waits patiently as Susan Collins, a member of Bridgeport Baptist Church, paints a spider on his face at a block party June 7.As much as eight inches of rain fell in parts of the Indianapolis area June 7, and it looked like months of preparation for neighborhood block parties, car washes, car shows and concerts might go for naught.
While some Crossover’08 events had to be cancelled, the rain didn’t dampen the spirits of Baptists gathered for events in Brownsburg, Ind., and at a multi-ethnic church in east-central Indianapolis.
Now in its 20th year, Crossover is an annual outreach to share the gospel in the host city the weekend before the Southern Baptist Convention’s annual meeting.
Some 500 volunteers – local Baptists and others from across the country – were scheduled for Crossover, which was jointly sponsored by the North American Mission Board, the State Convention of Baptists in Indiana and the Crossroads Baptist Association in Indianapolis.
Hope Community Church in Brownsburg, 18 miles west of Indianapolis, hosted a block party attended by 250 people from surrounding neighborhoods. When the torrential rains hit Saturday morning, organizers moved the event indoors and made the best of the situation.
“I was up praying at 6 o’clock this morning, hoping the Lord would change his mind about this, but he didn’t, and we said rain or shine we are committed to this event,” said Hope Community pastor Jim Bohrer. “We advertised it, we told people we were going to do it and we were going to keep our word whether or not it was convenient.”
Victor Benavides, the urban center evangelism coordinator for the North American Mission Board, shared the gospel using an EvangeCube with a resident of Blackburn Terrace Apartments in Indianapolis.Among the 250 on hand, 90 were not regular attendees at Hope. At least five indicated they prayed to receive Christ. Volunteers from Michigan helped train church members for the event, and a team of college students from Tennessee was on hand to help. When rain cancelled other Crossover events, volunteers from North Carolina diverted to Hope Community to help.
“We had some people who had done it for awhile show us the ropes so we didn’t get stuck or confused or miss a beat,” Bohrer said. “We were able to see this run smoothly, even with the rain, because of the assistance we were given from other Southern Baptist brothers and sisters in Christ.”
SBC president Frank Page dropped in on Hope Community’s block party after spending two hours sharing Christ door-to-door in the rain.
“Crossover events are important,” Page said, “because they combine the energies of local people with visitors such as myself in a beautiful partnership, and then the gospel is shared far more than it normally would be. So it’s very important and just a great practical way to express the Great Commission.”
Starting each year’s convention with Crossover, Page said, “shows what our priority is. It shows what we really care about is winning people to Christ.”
Stephen Davis, executive director of the State Convention of Baptists in Indiana, took encouragement that Crossover’s impact will last far beyond a weekend event.
“We’re doing some other things connected with these events, so it’s not just an event but a process,” Davis said. “It’s the beginning of helping us plant nine new churches in the Indianapolis area. And every event is connected to a local church. So we’re going to have much better follow-up, and we should see a much better result coming from this in terms of baptisms and strengthening church membership.”
The weekend emphasis also is a reminder for the state’s Baptists, Davis said.
“Eighty percent of the people in Indiana do not attend any Christian church on any given Sunday,” he said. “So we have a huge mission field here and – one of the things we’re trying to do is to remind Christians that Indiana is a mission field.”