This week we are highlighting First Baptist Church in Sapulpa. FBC has served the community since October 1898, seven years before Statehood.
The Sapulpa Herald interviewed Discipleship and Outreach Pastor, Paul Spittka, to learn the Church’s mission statement and goals.
“The vision of First Baptist Church is to be in Christ and transform the world, which will not be accomplished in our lifetime.”
“Our mission, how we accomplish that vision, is to abide in Christ, moment by moment, meeting the needs of each other, living out Christ in word and deed.”
The FBC campus has three major buildings and it covers two city blocks.
“Currently there is about a dozen of us. We are in a time of transition so we have five interims:
We have an interim Senior Pastor, an Interim Administrative Director, an Interim Worship Director, Student Director, and an interim Children’s Director.”
Pastor Spittka discussed First Baptist’s outreach to the community.
“We have in the last two years or so made a shift in our philosophy, basically to fulfill our mission statement, but more so to emulate the style that Jesus did. Instead of asking people to come to us, we come to them. So a lot of our ministries are not based on this campus but are in the community.
“We do yearly events like Business over Breakfast, we sponsor that five times a year. We are involved in Blowouts, Spooktacular, Lights On Christmas Chute, Jingle Bells, and we are going to be involved in the Revival Run sponsored by Shoulder2Shoulder ministry on April 29th.”
Another yearly event hosted by FBC is a teachers’ luncheon that is held every August. FBC also provides financial support to Sapulpa Public Schools.
“This year we have invested over $5000 in the local schools, where teachers can actually request money from us.”
He also mentioned monthly events:
“We participate in the Free Coffee Friday event at CTX by sponsoring the fourth Friday of every month. We pay for coffee from 7:30 a.m. to 9:30 a.m. so people come in and get free coffee, and just have great conversations. The second Saturday of every month we do something called Serve 66 where we serve Sapulpa or anyone on Route 66. We as a church have a fund that is called Sapulpa First where 2.5% of everything that is given to our church goes into an account that can only be used for Sapulpa or the 74066 zip code. That is our big local missions push.”
The FBC kitchen facility is used by several local civic clubs, such as the Lions Club, and Kiwanis, for their fundraisers. Other parts of the campus are available for local groups.
“We have an industrial kitchen, a fellowship hall that seats 250 to 300, depending on your seating arrangement, we are very blessed.”
First Baptist also has a disaster response team that is part of a broader Southern Baptist outreach.
“We go in partnership with the Southern Baptist Disaster Relief. Lou Martin, John Howell, some of the guys in our community, they lead that up. My wife and I just got certified, so we are just starting our Disaster Relief training.”
When asked about evangelism, Pastor Spittka replied:
“Number one, we try to work evangelism into everything that we do. Anytime we are doing the Blowout, or Spooktacular, we are always talking about Jesus, we are handing out tracts, we are praying with people. We are actually working toward creating a prayer app where people can submit prayer requests. Number two, one of our adult electives (a class taught on Wednesday nights) is just about studying how to evangelize.”
“Our whole job as pastors is Ephesians 4:11-14. We are to equip the people of God for service, we are not supposed to do it all.”
The pastor’s final comment was using a metaphor about the mission of the church.
“We talk about the difference between a battleship and a cruise ship. This church in its history has been a cruise ship, where the Saints come, and we have fun together, we build relationships, and we have great community. But, we are switching into becoming more of a battleship, where we realize that there is a war out there, and we have got to get out there and fight for the souls of men, women, children, and students.”
