Interview with: Rev. Garison Taylor, First Presbyterian Church of Frostproof
First Presbyterian Church of Frostproof began their strengthening journey in 2021 when a group of church leaders began reflecting on the church’s past identity and praying for and planning for future growth in ministry.
There’s no one activity that can be done to revitalize a church. For our first 2-3 years the main focus was prayer and preaching. Faithfully preaching through the Word of God to see the big picture of God’s covenant faithfulness to us and then our response to him. We look for the sovereignty of God, the grandeur of Jesus, and the beauty of grace in all that we do. We’ve been building community within the body of Christ by connecting people with each other, but first by connecting them to Christ.
Any activity that we do have has a twofold purpose: 1) build community within the body of Christ (this is why we engage younger with senior members) and 2) to have opportunities for gospel conversations. Some of my favorite memories of the past five years are the times of engagement with members, older and younger, as they ask questions about God, his Word, and living the Christian life. Those times always come out of something else where we are hanging our whether a family fun day or service project and sitting around afterwards and talking. I must let people be real and be real before people.
Encouragement for other churches?
How do you start with a small existing church that wants to revitalize but doesn’t know how? You have to work with the people to find their strengths and deficiencies. Then use the strengths to work on the deficiencies. Sometimes the way we’ve always things done is the way to go, sometimes it’s not. We ask the questions: Is it beneficial? Does it move the mission forward? If not, are we willing to let it go? Then what do we do?
Why we are growing:
- Gospel centered preaching
- Place where people feel they can come and ask questions
- A church that wants to be family- people feel welcomed
We are prayerfully moving forward one step at a time. Ultimately, I want to be faithful to the Word of God and be faithful in helping people understand and fall in love with God’s Word and God himself.
