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Huge Opportunity To Reach Sabine Parish Families With Children

There are many families with children in Sabine Parish. There are 4,141 students in Sabine Parish schools, 6,353 under the age of 18, 29% of the parish population, and approximately 3,000 households with children. So, there are plenty of unreached families with children to reach.

There are many churches in Sabine Parish. 70 churches. 1 church for every 313 people. Abilene, Texas brags about the highest per capita churches at 1 for every 563. The national average is 1 for every 1015. We beat the averages. So, we don't need more churches in Sabine Parish, but we do need more biblically sound churches, filled and controlled by God's Spirit, who are committed to God's mission, and who train their members to reach the unreached in our parish.

There are far fewer people attending church in Sabine Parish. 7,000 people attend church, between 3,500 and 5,000 on any given Sunday. That attendance is half what it was 25 years ago. So, we need to make disciples, not just converts. Disciples follow. Just converts come and go. 

The majority of church growth in Sabine Parish is transfer growth. Most churches in Sabine Parish are on a plateau or are declining. The few growing churches grow primarily by biological and transfer growth (having babies, people who had dropped out coming back, or moving from church to church). This is common. Most of the growth in most churches in this country is biological and transfer. So, we don't need to reach already reached families to come from another church to our own, but we need to, again, train one another and work together to reach the unreached families with children.

There are far more families with children not attending church than attending. There are about 4,900 unchurched children and 2,100 unchurched families with children. 50 years ago, 70% of people in the South attended church regularly. If that were true today, there would be 14,700 people in church, not 7,000 in Sabine Parish. If that were true today, there would be 2,100 families with children in the church rather than 2,100 unchurched. So, we should absolutely not get comfortable with our success at reaching anyone, especially families with children. Even if our church is doing well, the church in Sabine Parish is not, and our church lives and serves God in Sabine Parish. 

The potential to reach and disciple families with children in Sabine Parish is huge. The God we serve and whose Son we preach is exceedingly, abundantly able to do more than we ask or imagine, and we can do this if we repent, return, and give ourselves to the Great Commission in Sabine Parish.

(My information comes from the US Census, Pew Research, Sabine Parish School board, Lifeway Research, and personal research into church attendance patterns in Sabine Parish over the past 25 years.)

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