Southern Baptists target LV for growth

Stacy J. Willis

Monday, April 12, 1999 | 10:12 a.m.

Consider the appeal of Jesus and buttered popcorn.

Last month 1,000 North Las Vegas residents found a bag on their doorstep that contained a video about the life of Jesus, a package of microwave popcorn and an invitation to a Southern Baptist church.

Within a year, all 1.2 million residents of the Las Vegas Valley should receive a similar package in the mail, courtesy of the Southern Nevada Baptist Association.

And in the year 2001 the national Southern Baptist Convention will pour $2.5 million into the coffers of Las Vegas Baptist churches to encourage the growth of the Baptist community in the city.

"There is really a kind of revival of Christianity going on in Las Vegas," Harry Watson, director of missions at the association, said. "Southern Baptists nationally have targeted Las Vegas as a city where God is working and will continue to work."

As a part of the Nashville-based SBC's Strategic Focus Cities program, Las Vegas has been selected as one of the first four cities that will receive the organization's attention for one full year. In 2000, Phoenix and Chicago will be the center of Baptists' effort to evangelize; in 2001, Las Vegas and Boston will be the Southern Baptist hot spots.

"The SBC has decided that if we're going to make a difference in the U.S., we need to focus on the big cities by pouring cash and volunteers into those cities two at a time," Watson said. "During that year, all of the efforts of the SBC will be devoted toward those cities in such a way that we can change the community and improve the quality of life."

Watson said that more than 1,000 volunteers from outside Nevada can be expected to converge on Las Vegas during the year 2001. The $2.5 million will be used to fund an advertising campaign including television spots, brochures and billboards, as well as sports events and block parties that carry the be-a-Baptist message.

There are 101 Southern Baptist churches in Southern Nevada, according to Watson. Nationally, Southern Baptists have grabbed headlines in recent years for their statement calling for the role of women to be secondary to that of their husbands and an SBC-backed protest of gay-tolerant Disneyland.

In terms of church life, Baptists distinguish themselves from other Protestant denominations in several ways. "There is a born-again experience, the autonomy of local churches and a strong and continued effort to evangelize," the Rev. Tommy Starkes, a Southern Baptist minister at the Tropicana Christian Fellowship in Las Vegas, said.

Starkes defines the born-again experience as "a moment from which I say I allow Jesus to come in as Lord and master of my life and I am a disciple who is not ashamed of that."

People who cannot identify such a moment in their lives, Starkes said, are not considered true Christians by Southern Baptists.

"Baptists also have a distinct emphasis on church starts, and Las Vegas has started more than 30 new Baptist churches in the last five years," Starkes said.

"We far outstrip the Methodists or Lutherans or Episcopalians or other Protestant denominations in church starts. Some of our new churches are small, but they will grow.

"Our national leaders emphasize two things: church starts and evangelism," Starkes said. "That's where the money goes. That's virtually all we've heard about from the national leaders for the last five years: church starts and evangelism."

State convention leaderFurther behind the scenes pulling the strings meant to tug Las Vegas toward the Baptist faith is the Rev. Russ Daines, a Southern Baptist minister at El Camino Baptist Church. In his 40-plus years in the valley, Daines has been a cop and a convict, a "partier" and a devout family man, an outspoken leader of the anti-abortion group Operation Rescue and an undercover narcotics agent.

And now he is the president of the Nevada Baptist Convention -- the state chapter of the SBC.

"Oh, yes, we made a great case to the SBC to get Las Vegas chosen as a Strategic Focus city," Daines said.

El Camino is a start-up church that holds services in an elementary school. It is not the first Southern Baptist church that Daines has started, nor the only one he advises. In fact, Daines specializes in church starts, which makes him consider the "large, unchurched Nevada" a "tremendous, glorious opportunity."

"The Lord has called me to do two things: He either uses me to start new churches or to revive troubled ones," he said. "We have plans to start a multitude of local churches in the next few years."

Fifteen years ago, even before attending a seminary in Kentucky, Daines was starting churches. In 1984, while still on the police force, Daines preached to a group of 15 families in a converted warehouse near McCarran International Airport -- the Sunset Emmanuel Baptist Church. As one of many Baptist leaders in the city, Daines is known as much for his past as for his flair for church starts.

He was raised in North Las Vegas and graduated from Rancho High School in 1964. His father, Ray Daines, was a North Las Vegas police officer, a municipal judge and a two-term North Las Vegas mayor.

The younger Daines also became a police officer for the North Las Vegas force in 1970.

In the midst of his 18-year law-enforcement career, he began attending church and slowly decided that his real calling was the ministry. He made some lifestyle changes and started pastoring in his spare time.

"I would buy cocaine as an undercover officer during the week and preach on Sundays," Daines said. He began to believe that he had been called by God not only to preach to congregations, but also to protest abortion.

"As I turned to Christ and began to study the Word, it became very apparent to me that abortion was the taking of a human life," he said.

Until the 1973 Roe vs. Wade decision legalizing abortion in the United States, police officers in North Las Vegas arrested doctors who performed abortions.

"When I came on the force, it was a felony, and abortionists were considered heinous criminals," he said. "Then overnight in 1973 everything changed."

For the next few years, he struggled with the conflict between his religious beliefs and his professional duty. "From my desk at the department, I could see Lake Mead Hospital 200 yards away where they were performing abortions. That put me in a big moral dilemma. Police are charged with defending life. I decided that I could not uphold an unjust law. How could I defend these laws if they were unjust?"

In 1988, he decided to leave the police force and devote himself full time to an anti-abortion mission and Baptist church pastoring.

"I retired one day and was arrested for protesting abortion the next day," he said.

Daines became a local organizer for Operation Rescue, a nationwide anti-abortion group. Most Baptists -- 90 percent, according to Starkes -- oppose abortion.

"It is taught in the churches, but is rare that the churches mobilize people for protests," Starkes said.

In that regard, Daines stands out among his colleagues -- he said he does organize his congregation to protest abortion.

In January 1989, he led a group of 90 pro-lifers to the front steps of the Family Planning Institute where he told onlookers, "We are going to stop the killing of babies today. Just yards from where you stand, women are having babies killed."

The group blocked several women from entering the clinic before being arrested. Some women later reported that they were not going in for abortions but for appointments related to other health issues.

A Metro Police officer, Chet Gallagher, lost his job because he joined the blockade while on duty.

In the days following the incident, Daines told the Sun, "We are extremely delighted because we know lives were saved. We have confirmed at least three lives that were saved because of the rescue."

Although today Daines stays busy with his work as the president of the local SBC chapter and pastor of El Camino, he still considers his anti-abortion work key to his ministry. "There was a time when I said I'd rather commit suicide than go to jail," he recalled about his arrests for protesting legal abortions. "I repented that while I was in jail the first time. And since then I've been incarcerated 10 or 12 times."

"I have often thought, 'Lord, what have you done with me?' " Daines said. "I never thought it would work out this way. "But you have to put your money where your mouth is, don't you?"

Strategy for VegasAs a part of the effort to increase the number of Baptists in Las Vegas and to continue the church starts with the $2.5 million from the SBC, local leaders plan to hire an executive director to oversee the funds. "We're looking for someone with a business background who is a committed Baptist," Starkes said. "Maybe someone with a marketing background."

The salary, which will be drawn from the $2.5 million, will be in the $50,000 range, Starkes said.

In addition to spending the funds on targeting Las Vegans to become Baptists, Starkes said that leaders have formed a committee to explore ways to convey the Baptist message to tourists.

"We're talking about booths at the Comdex or rodeo," Starkes said. "Whatever it takes to get the message out there."

The Rev. Michael Rochelle said the North American Mission Board of the SBC decided that a growing area such as Las Vegas was ideal for concentrated evangelical efforts -- and emphasized to local Baptist leaders that the membership-building efforts should include not only Baptist churches but other evangelical Christian churches.

"It came down to Seattle or Las Vegas," Rochelle, pastor at Shadow Hills Baptist, said. "I met with people at the SBC about this and they made certain that before choosing Las Vegas, we understood it was to be a much larger thing than just Baptists. So we will include other Christian churches in the events."

Often, Daines said, newly converted Christians initially feel comfortable at large, nondenominational Christian churches "and then when they're ready to make the next step in their faith, they will come to us."

"We sent a 13-page document to the SBC explaining why Las Vegas should be selected," Watson added. "We said, 'The time is right for Baptists to make a difference here.' "

Between now and 2001, local Southern Baptists will continue the Jesus video mission. To blanket Clark County residences with Jesus videos, Baptist leaders must raise $1.5 million to cover purchase and mailing costs.

"This is not something that's pie-in-the-sky -- it's something we're working toward right now. We're shooting for delivery of the videos on either Christmas 1999 or Easter 2000," Watson said.

The 83-minute videos, which have been distributed by Christians in more than 30 countries and in a similar number of languages, are said to bring one person into church for every video delivered -- a return achieved, Watson said, by counting each member of a family that comes to church as a result of one video.

"It's a high-return investment," he said.

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