In January 2016, I became the Senior Pastor of Taylor Road Baptist Church in Montgomery, Alabama. Accepting the call to Taylor Road was a step of faith. The church had experienced a steep decline in membership and attendance over a ten-year period. Young families had left in droves. On top of that, there was a $7 million debt looming over the church’s head. Needless to say, as a 30-year-old pastor, there wasn’t a whole lot about the situation that was enticing.
In my first in-person meeting with the Pastor Search Committee, one of the committee members, with tears in her eyes, said something that struck me deeply. Remembering the past days of the church’s glory—running three Sunday services, two Sunday School hours, and hundreds of people in attendance—she said, “We aren’t a lazy church, but we are a lost church. We don’t know our purpose.”
One thing was very clear—this was a people who desired to reach the lost in their city and the nations with the gospel of Jesus Christ. Part of what made this evident to me was that, despite tremendous debt and all the negative change the church had endured for several years, their commitment to Cooperative Program giving remained.
Even with the realistic possibility of the bank foreclosing on the property, Taylor Road remained consistent in giving to the work of Southern Baptists. In fact, 10.25% of the budget was allocated to CP giving. To be honest, that blew my mind. I was told that there had, obviously, been serious discussion in committee meetings regarding the possibility of decreasing giving through CP but that every single time it was shot down. This was a church that believed that cooperative partnership in the Great Commission mattered most.
So, in the Fall of 2015, after much prayer and fasting, my wife and I felt the Lord leading us to Taylor Road. I’ve never heard the audible voice of God, but I’ll never forget the day in my office, while praying about accepting the call to Taylor Road, when the Lord spoke very clearly to my heart and said, “I’m going to do something at that church and you can either be there to be part of it or you can hear about it from somewhere else.” That’s all it took for me.
When I arrived at Taylor Road, and never having undertaken the work of revitalization, I sought the Lord for vision and strategy. Early in my ministry here, I made three core commitments:
- Build my ministry on prayer and expository preaching.
- Commit to staying—no matter how difficult things get or how tempting it may be to leave.
- The Great Commission matters most.
Casting vision is easy. Carrying out the vision, however, is a much different and more challenging assignment. Remembering that first conversation with the Pastor Search Committee, that Taylor Road was a church in need of a purpose and identity, I began praying for a vision and strategy that would lead us to be the church God desired it to be. In the Spring of 2016, we introduced a new mission and purpose statement that would define and give parameters to everything we would do as a church: We exist to glorify God, introduce people to Jesus, and teach them to follow Him. We printed it on posters and hung it in every hallway, classroom, bathroom (anything on campus with a wall!), and I spent six weeks preaching through the origin of our purpose statement in Matthew 28:18-20.
We began assessing everything our church was involved with—every ministry, small group, event—using this purpose statement as the standard. We asked questions like, “Does this event glorify God? Does it introduce people to Jesus?” “Do our small groups provide an opportunity for people to connect with Jesus and with each other in discipleship?” Sometimes this assessment led us to uncomfortable and difficult discussions regarding whether or not we should stop certain ministries that did not accomplish our purpose.
In that first year, I challenged our Stewardship Committee, and our church as a whole, to adopt what we called an Acts 1:8 strategy. I believed that God was leading our church to more than just sending money to missions (as important as that is). He wanted our church to go on mission! We established evangelistic outreach ministries in our city by holding neighborhood block parties, partnering with local schools, and transforming our annual Trunk-or-Treat Fall Festival into an evangelistic hayride through scenes from biblical stories. We established partnerships with Alabama Baptist church plants, NAMB church plants in San Diego and New York City, sending teams and resources throughout the year. We also partnered with international church planters and supported them both financially and by sending teams on short-term mission trips.
This required a step of faith from our church, because increasing our giving to missions while still millions of dollars in debt did not make much sense from a human perspective. But what God was teaching us was perhaps the most transformative truth we could have learned: when a church focuses on the mission more than the money, God will take care of the need. What we began to see can only be described as a work of the Holy Spirit. As a church, we wholeheartedly and in unity committed to this principle: the mission matters most. The Great Commission has been the church’s marching orders for the last 2,000 years, and the orders have not been changed.
By 2019, the Lord was moving in a powerful way in our church. We were growing, baptizing people who were coming to faith in Christ, starting new small groups in homes all over our city, and seeing our evangelistic reach grow further than ever before. Then, along with every other church, we faced the global pandemic of 2020. Everything suddenly changed overnight. In-person gatherings had to stop. In-home small groups had to suspend. The economic climate threatened to impact giving. By God’s grace, though, we, corporately committed ourselves to living out our charge that the mission matters most. We held parking lot worship services, launched an outdoor prison ministry, and began a food relief ministry serving hundreds of families twice a month while sharing the gospel with everyone who came through our distribution lines.
During this time of testing, our people committed themselves to trusting the Lord like never before. We committed ourselves to intense prayer for revival and renewal. We, as a church, took to heart God’s word in Malachi 3:10, “Bring the full tithe into the storehouse, that there may be food in my house. And thereby put me to the test, says the Lord of hosts, if I will not open the windows of heaven for you and pour down for you a blessing until there is no more need.” Giving was greater than any time in the history of the church, ministry and missions were more extensive and impactful than ever before, and unity of purpose was at its strongest since I became pastor. Never in the history of Taylor Road Baptist were the words of Malachi 3:10 truer.
Coming out of 2020, we have experienced a season of God’s grace and blessing in ways that I don’t think any of us could have imagined. At the beginning of 2023, our remaining debt was just over $2 million. Since 2008, our debt was not included in our annual budget (+$1 million). It was always dependent upon the designated giving of our people, above and beyond their regular tithes. Again, God’s requirement for our church was to live obediently and trust Him with the provision. So, combining our annual required loan payments with our annual budget needs, our people were asked to give just under $2 million a year. On top of all of that, the members of Taylor Road continued to faithfully give to the Annie Armstrong Easter Offering, the Lottie Moon Christmas Offering, and our Alabama Baptist Myers-Mallory State Missions Offering. Why? Because the mission matters most. We firmly believe in the cooperative mission of Southern Baptists.
By God’s grace, in 2023 our church paid off its debt and began operating debt-free for the first time in 15 years. We are excited to move forward into the future with even more freedom to glorify God, introduce people to Jesus, and teach them to follow Him. In 2024, we’ve increased our CP giving to 10.5% and are committing our resources even more to the Lord. Southern Baptists have been known as a people of the Word and a Great Commission people. At Taylor Road Baptist Church, we are proud to play a part in what God is doing through Southern Baptists to take the gospel to the nations.
Daniel Atkins
Daniel Atkins received his B.S. in Christian Theology from the University of Mobile, his M.Div. at Southeastern Baptist Theological Seminary, and completed his D.Min. at Anderson University (SC) in 2020. He serves as the Senior Pastor at Taylor Road Baptist Church in Montgomery, Alabama. Daniel and his wife, Kristy, have three children.