Baptists Use Telemarketing Tools to ‘Plant’ Church in Diamond Bar

Last summer there was no Chaparral Community Church in Diamond Bar. But after an initial barrage of 16,219 phone calls to homes in the area in August and subsequent mailings, a new Southern Baptist congregation emerged in full bloom by late October.

“We hate to use a marketing approach for religion, but that’s better than not doing anything,” said the Rev. John Jackson, a pastor whose Anaheim church sponsored the mission effort to the north in the bedroom community of Diamond Bar.

About 140 people showed up for the first Sunday service. Following an expected pattern, it now averages about 75 to 80 people per Sunday at the junior high school where it meets.

Jackson and about 100 volunteers at the Crescent Baptist Church in Anaheim used a telemarketing process developed by Norman Whan, director of church planting for the Friends Church Southwest, and now employed widely by other denominations in less than two years.

“Southern Baptists had tried twice before to get new churches started in Diamond Bar,” Jackson said. The pastor said he thinks this one will succeed.

“It will be larger than mine in three to five years; it’s in a growing area,” Jackson said. His own church averages about 400 people on Sundays, but it is, in his words, in an older, established area and with no room for expansion.

Last August, Crescent Baptist Church installed 10 telephones and started calling between 7 and 9 p.m. Monday through Friday. Only about half--8,244--were reached. Of them, 2,030 families wanted to be on a mailing list for the new church.

Though the volunteers tried to make a final call to the 2,030 families, only 985 were reached in time before the first service Oct. 16. More were called later.

The new church’s pastor, the Rev. Cliff Howery, is still technically on the staff of the sponsoring Anaheim church. The congregation also receives monthly support from the state and regional Southern Baptist organizations.

Speaking of the system devised by Whan, Jackson told the California Southern Baptist news weekly, “It is our belief that we could add thousands to the Kingdom (of God) using this method of starting churches in the next 10 years.”

Started With Mailing List

Jackson’s church deviated on a few organizational points from Whan’s plan. Jackson said organizers started with a mailing list of about 30 persons in the Diamond Bar area before the telephone calls were made in August.

And contrary to Whan’s advice to put the denomination’s name in the church’s name, it was left out of Chaparral Community Church (named after the Chaparral Hills in the area).

Jackson said the name Southern Baptist suggests a regional body despite the nationwide scope of the 14-million member denomination. Aside from Catholics and Mormons, Southern Baptists are the most numerous denomination in California.

“If you don’t get a hearing, you don’t have a chance to explain who you are,” Jackson said. “Most people are looking for a Bible-believing church, I think, and when people find out what we believe, there is no problem.”