{"id":21942,"date":"2019-02-26T14:34:29","date_gmt":"2019-02-26T19:34:29","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/floridabaptist.wpengine.com\/?p=21942"},"modified":"2025-11-04T15:58:11","modified_gmt":"2025-11-04T20:58:11","slug":"write-beside-you-tallahassee","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/flbaptist.org\/write-beside-you-tallahassee\/","title":{"rendered":"FBC\u2019s Write Beside You in Tallahassee Draws Many"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a href=\"https:\/\/www.thomasvilleroad.org\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer nofollow\">Thomasville Road Baptist Church<\/a> in Tallahassee hosted this year\u2019s first Write Beside You adopt-a-school-initiative workshop to equip local church leaders in reaching their public schools for Christ.<\/p>\n<p>Tommy Green, executive director-treasurer of the Florida Baptist Convention (FBC), has challenged Florida Baptist churches to see public schools as a mission field for their local church. There are over 4,000 public schools in Florida and roughly 3,100 Florida Baptist churches. \u201cImagine the impact our churches could make if each of them adopted one school,\u201d said Green.<\/p>\n<p>The Write Beside You Initiative is the FBC\u2019s way of resourcing churches to partner with public schools in their communities.<\/p>\n<p>The event, attended by 125 pastors and leaders, was done in partnership with <a href=\"https:\/\/churchadoptaschool.org\/the-initiative\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer nofollow\">The Urban Alternative\u2019s Adopt-a-school initiative<\/a>, a branch of Tony Evans Ministry, and the staff from The Urban Alternative facilitated the training.<\/p>\n<p>Bill Collins, vice president of The Urban Alternative, challenged church leaders to make public school ministry a priority. \u201cIf your church shuts the doors, would the school even know it?\u201d The staff emphasized the importance of building relationships with the school to be able to make positive impact in the lives of students, teachers, staff and families to ultimately share Christ.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cCommunity ministry is vital and will be vital until Jesus comes,\u201d said Gary Townsend, north Florida regional catalyst of the FBC. \u201cSo we have to go into the field where the next generation is and make a difference as mentors and just have a presence, come right beside them and let them know we are there for them.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Brandon Denmark, pastor of <a href=\"http:\/\/www.trinitybc.org\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer nofollow\">Trinity Baptist Church<\/a> in Keystone Heights, attended the conference along with executive pastor, Scott Stanland. &#8220;I attended the Write Beside You conference in hopes of gaining some practical insights on how I can further our church&#8217;s relationship with our local schools,\u201d said Denmark. \u201cThe wisdom and material shared in these sessions has given me a number of ideas I plan to pursue in the near future.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>Some ways churches can help include:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>Mentoring<\/li>\n<li>Tutoring<\/li>\n<li>Serving faculty and staff by providing breakfasts and lunches<\/li>\n<li>Helping set up classrooms<\/li>\n<li>Doing beautification work on campus<\/li>\n<li>Providing pre-game meals for sports teams<\/li>\n<li>Setting up a backpack feeding program<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>The Florida Baptist Convention will host one more \u201cWrite Beside You\u201d adopt a school workshop with The Urban Alternative in 2019. That event will be held in Miami on May 16. Find out more about that event <a href=\"https:\/\/flbaptist.org\/event\/write-beside-you-hialeah\/\">here<\/a>.<\/p>\n<p>By Billy Young, Florida Baptist Convention, February 26, 2019<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Thomasville Road Baptist Church in Tallahassee hosted this year\u2019s first Write Beside You adopt-a-school-initiative workshop to equip local church leaders in reaching their public schools for Christ. Tommy Green, executive [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":80,"featured_media":21943,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"ep_exclude_from_search":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[2621,19,155,45,1632],"tags":[1747,1276,1748,1537,387,1634],"class_list":["post-21942","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-archive","category-news","category-next-generation","category-statewide","category-write-beside-you","tag-bill-collins","tag-billy-young","tag-the-urban-alternative","tag-thomasville-road-baptist-church","tag-trinity-baptist-church","tag-write-beside-you"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/flbaptist.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/21942","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/flbaptist.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/flbaptist.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/flbaptist.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/80"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/flbaptist.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=21942"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/flbaptist.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/21942\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":68439,"href":"https:\/\/flbaptist.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/21942\/revisions\/68439"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/flbaptist.org\/wp-json\/"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/flbaptist.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=21942"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/flbaptist.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=21942"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/flbaptist.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=21942"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}