Sixteen years ago, Chris Vitarelli upended his family of five to plant a church in Fenton, Michigan, a town of 12,000 with 58 lakes within a 10-mile radius.
Like many church planters, Chris and his team labored to reach a critical mass with their newly-hatched congregation, The Road. But following five years of growth, God recently brought them to the energizing point of needing two services and soon to be three sites. Vitarelli was thrilled, but something bugged him.
Where were all the baptisms?
“We have an evangelistic heart and reach out to our community like crazy. It got under my skin,” Vitarelli shakes his head. “So we went back to the basics: Let’s get back to reaching people.”
He asked the congregation to collectively pray for one baptism a month in the next year, which is a big deal, considering that would be 12% of their 100-person congregation.
Before You Cross the Ocean
Vitarelli has been participating in a Converge-sponsored cohort with the Billy Graham Center’s Church Evangelism Institute through Wheaton College. “I figured if there was a[n evangelism] problem, it was probably lacking in my own life as a leader. I didn’t want to ask something of people that I’m not willing to do.
“When I first moved here, I believed the first people we needed to pastor were our neighbors. I realized I now had neighbors I didn’t know.”
Historically, The Road has been “all about the go-and-tell rather than the come-and-see,” explains Vitarelli. “We don’t really have the facility or the grounds for big events.”
So nearly every month, the congregation actively reaches out. In addition to their clothing giveaway and a year-round emergency homeless shelter, members of The Road show up at the farmer’s market in Fenton’s cheerful downtown during the summer, wearing bright yellow shirts that say, Need prayer? Ask me. August means giving away backpacks of school supplies.
In October, the church hosts Fall Fest at a low-income housing development. At a free pumpkin patch on church property, they give away 300 pumpkins in an afternoon, building relationships around donuts and Polaroids of every family with their pumpkins. November brings the congregation’s annual coat drive.
Spring brings an Easter egg event, but in keeping with Vitarelli’s drive for local neighborhoods, The Road decentralizes its hunt by dispersing hundreds of eggs so church members can reach their own neighbors.
For Vitarelli, outreach begins with the relational piece rather than an event. “It has to start with your neighbors. There’s no sense crossing the ocean if you haven’t crossed the street.”
He also questions the “get your neighbor to church” mindset. “People feel like if they can get someone in the church building, the gospel will be preached and they will have done their job. But the best way to share who Jesus is is in a one-on-one relational environment where you’re just talking, just sharing what Jesus has done.”
And Vitarelli has been taking his own medicine. He’s been praying for his neighbors again. But he’s also crossing his own street to introduce himself and get intentional. He’s working on a plan for a simple neighborhood get-together around the fire in his back-porch stove.
“It’s a Motivator for Everybody”
By August, The Road had witnessed a record 10 baptisms this year, a mix of existing and new attendees.
One of Vitarelli’s favorite baptismal testimonies is that of a woman, Tiffany, and her husband. The two returned to church as they journeyed through his need for an organ transplant—and a few months later, her own need for a transplant. As Tiffany reencountered Jesus, she was ready to follow His command of baptism.
Another woman, too, was followed in baptism by her husband, a former Catholic to whom baptism hadn’t been emphasized in his six and a half decades of life.
Perhaps some might have written off the need to be baptized at that point. But the crowd at The Road watched him descend into the water and be lifted out.
“When people understand the imagery of what baptism really is, it takes the excitement way up,” Vitarelli says. “You’re witnessing someone say, I stand with Christ, he is my all in all. But you’re also witnessing the burial to and washing away of the old self, and the resurrection of the new self.” The entire congregation witnesses a highly sensory event.
“Everyone standing there watching remembers their own baptism.”
Thankfully, baptism carries a happy social contagion. “It’s a motivator for everybody,” Vitarelli smiles. “It creates a culture. It builds this momentum you can’t buy or manufacture. You’re just trying to keep up with the Holy Spirit!”