Just off the Mountain Parkway, on the Wolfe-Morgan County line, sits Crossroads Baptist Church, a little white church in the quaint community of Helechawa, KY. The building that once housed the community school was given to the church as a place of worship. In 2007 Crossroads was started as a mission of Faith Baptist Church Cannel City with 6 members. It soon grew to 17 or 18 members.
Mission teams from Pellville Baptist Church in Hawesville, White Hall Baptist Church in Richmond, Mt. Washington Baptist Church, Little Flock Baptist Church in Shepherdsville, Shively Baptist Church in Louisville, and perhaps others, came alongside Crossroads to fix up their building and help with outreach. For several years Shively Baptist Church also came to lead Vacation Bible School. I recall the day someone from the church called to ask for help in planning their own VBS. Although they had made many good friends and appreciated the work of the mission teams, they were eager to conduct a VBS themselves, without depending on outside help.
During the November 2013 Kentucky Baptist Convention Annual Meeting, Crossroads moved from “mission” to “church” status. Red River Baptist Association Mission Strategist George Drake shared that West Liberty Baptist Church had been the mother church of Faith Baptist Church in the early 1980s, Faith Baptist Church was the mother church of Grace Baptist Church in the mid-1990s and Crossroads Baptist Church in 2007, and Grace Baptist Church was the mother church of Wrigley Baptist in 2005. In the Fall of 2013 I visited, and wrote a blog about, Crossroads Baptist Church. The blog ended with, “Perhaps sometime in the future we will hear that Crossroads has also birthed a church.”
While that has not actually happened, I recently learned from Red River Baptist Association Mission Strategist George Drake that Crossroads has moved their Sunday evening services to the Nada Baptist Mission, about 30 miles away. Since hearing that the Nada Mission had closed and the church building given to the Red River Baptist Association, Crossroads Pastor Mark Risner has had such a burden for the church and the Nada community, and desires to see the Mission revived or replanted.
Crossroad’s members have painted and cleaned up around the Nada Mission, have gone door-to-door inviting the community to their services, and are planning a Vacation Bible School for the later part of June 2021. Other churches in the area, as well as a mission team from Western Kentucky, have also come alongside to help with the Nada Mission. Volunteers have helped with the physical labor, while others have donated funds to help pay bills.
Before COVID Crossroads was averaging 45-50 in attendance. This little church, in the mountains of eastern Kentucky, is excited to be on-mission. Please pray with them about the future of the Nada Mission, for the families in the community, and that God will send a pastor to this church. I can’t wait to see how my blog will read in another 8 years.
Churches helping churches, churches planting churches, churches reopening churches with closed doors – this is the cooperative Kentucky Baptist Convention way…and, might I add, God’s way of spreading the Gospel, from person to person, community to community.
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