Vision 2020 Grant Money… Helping Churches and Communities

Each quarter, the BR-KC Baptist Association gives away over $29,000 to assist churches in their efforts to impact their community and the world with the gospel of Jesus Christ. This money is provided by the Vision 2020 Grant Fund, made possible by the sale of the Association’s Mission Center in 2014. During the fourth quarter of 2015, United Believers Community Church applied for three grants from the Association’s Vision 2020 Grant Fund. Below is a report on the use of these funds.

Gospel Outreach
We printed 1,000 children’s books and disseminated them to six urban schools and within the radius of 29th Street to Truman and Van Brunt to Prospect. This wide array was catapulted by nearly 125 volunteers who made sure homes were touched with the Gospel. The book is evangelistic in nature and creative in its instructional content.

Also, the material content was developed by current and former school teachers and administrators. To note, the artwork throughout the book was produced by a locally wellknown artist.

Church Planting
We have planted a sister congregation called CONNECTIONS CHURCH. This unique ministry meets congregationally on Saturday evenings at 5:30 pm for a one hour service. Also, it reaches an audience daily through their web-based ministry inclusive of YouTube, live stream, On Demand, and various social media outlets. This congregation will grow numerically and the grant has provided us the ability to reduce our rent for their service by 50%, buy new equipment (speakers, sound board, etc) due to shared space and technology use and provide an electronic keyboard to aid them in their weekly service. On a regular and consistent basis, we continue to impart hope and encouragement to the pastor and core leaders by providing them resources and insight on how to perform effective ministry.

Additionally, we hosted a roundtable of church planters and small churches and gave out and touched eight congregations with cases of Bibles for evangelism, seven urban pastors with on-going formative development in their ministry context and gave each of them trustworthy content and research from our African American Pastors Fellowship on a national level. We are meeting presently with seven pastors going through the book Disciples Path. They are given a free copy and kit and we discuss how to make our front door approach to church and Christ (assimilation process) more fluid and effective.

Resourcing Churches
We are grateful for this allocation of funds that helped us to complete a $50,000 capital improvement renovation to the former Greendale Baptist Church property currently known as United Believers Church, North Campus. The grant funds helped us to settle the remaining debt owed.