Good morning, I just had breakfast with good friend, Dan Newburn. He is the pastor of Sun City Community Church. It is a senior adult church in Sun City Summerlin. We talked about a lot of stuff: friends, family, church history –history of Las Vegas. I have been serving here for 47 years, and Dan was here when I came here. Dan was raised Methodist. He came to Las Vegas to serve Methodist churches. He was offered an American Baptist Church (Homesite) and became pastor there. After that he pastored Redrock Southern Baptist Church. Then he planted Summerlin Community Baptist Church and has pastored Sun City for several years.

We discussed the evolution of churches. From mostly community churches (reaching people within walking distance of the church) to churches reaching people of like kind. Today people travel to a church of their choice rather than worshiping with their neighbors.

The early churches for Southern Baptist in Las Vegas were on a grid planned out as a church every 3 miles. Take Owens 5+ for example; east to west. Sunrise, College Park, the Twin Lakes. Each were identified by the target neighborhood they served. North of College Park was Calvary So BC and south of College Park were Homesite and Parkdale.

We were organized so that the target community was evangelized. We all did evangelistic events to reach our community. Being ignorant of the strategy, I evangelized area to Sunrise, and the pastor called me and told me I was in his territory. We knew our community and planned evangelistic events, opened our building to the community. We were involved in our geographic community.

Does your church have a defined evangelistic target? Who are you planning to target?

How is it going?