Great Soul-Winning Churches - Elmer Towns

The children are divided into Sunday School classes by their bus routes, i.e., all the fouryear-old
children in one bus attend Sunday School in the same class. This way children are not
running all over the church. The teacher returns with the children to their bus at 12:00 noon.
When Wallace begins to baptize, the teachers begin to load the buses.
Beth Haven makes maximum use of its facilities with a double session Sunday School,
although the two sessions are not distinctly divided in a flip-flop manner. At 9:45 the pre-school
children go to Sunday School, the first and second grades go to children’s church. At the same
time, junior and senior high school go to church in the rented auditorium of a nearby school
building, Grade 3 through 6 to Sunday School in the junior and senior high school classes, and
they switch at 11:00.
Many of the classes are built on the large classroom, lead-teacher concept. These classes
can be interchanged with children’s church. Other classes are built on small, self-contained
rooms. For instance, there are 10 classes for the seventh graders used at 11:00 a.m. These rooms
are used by younger children at 9:45.
Gardiner Gentry began the first non-literature class in the Sunday School with two people
and eventually expanded to 125. In October, 1967, the church stopped dividing adults by ages
and allowed them to attend where they wanted. At that time, there were about 150 adults and
now are over 400 in the adult classes taught by laymen and staff members. By the end of the
year, they have a goal of 1,000 adults in Sunday School.
Last year, the church had 2,600 children for vacation Bible school and ran out of room to
handle the children. This year, they are planning a TV-VBS over Channel WHAS at 9:30 each
morning for five days. Instead of bringing the children to church, they are taking church to the
child; sixty thousand workbooks have been prepared to go with the daily Bible adventure series
that will be taught through film strips, pictures and narration. A Bible cartoon each day will
feature the JOT series prepared by the Southern Baptists. There will be special music and
explanation of the workbook. Each child will be encouraged to fill out the workbook and bring it
to Sunday School the following week to get a reward, hence tying the TV program to the local
church.
THE FUTURE IS BRIGHT
The Beth Haven Baptist Church has experienced continued growth in the past, but the
future is even brighter.
YEAR SUNDAY SCHOOL ATTENDANCE AVERAGE
1963 588
1965 758
1967 850
1969 1066