Mobile Church That Voted to Close Now Has 70 Members and 30 Baptisms
Manor Baptist Church was down to six members and preparing to chain its doors when it called Pastor Donald Turner two years ago.
See where this is ›MOBILE, Ala. —
Manor Baptist Church in Mobile, Alabama, had voted to close, given its money to charitable causes and was preparing to chain its doors. Two years later the church has more than 70 members and has baptized 30 people, The Alabama Baptist reported in a story by David Roach, republished Oct. 30 by Kentucky Today.
The six remaining members called Donald Turner as pastor, hoping he could reach Black neighbors in the changing community around the church. Turner, a retired Air Force man who later worked in oil and gas, came to faith in 2007 and was called to ministry in 2017. While working in Papua New Guinea from 2019 to 2023, he started two churches in ExxonMobil camps.
Turner's family used two months of tithes to repair the run-down building, and the church reopened after three weeks of work. The first Sunday brought eight of Turner's relatives and the six members, who had planned to leave until he asked them for one more week. For nearly nine months, about four or five new people came each week; the pace then slowed to one or two.
Sunday School had only Turner's family for its first six months and now has 25 people, with classes for men, women and children. A midweek Bible study has moved from Revelation to John and now Acts. The congregation is about 80% Black and 20% white, according to the report, and summer outreach led three new families to faith in Christ. Two of those families have been baptized, and the third is awaiting baptism.
After Turner's first Sunday, a sermon on the Lord's Supper, the husband in a white couple who had attended for about a decade recognized he was not a believer, the report said. The couple had resisted the efforts of 10 interim pastors to win them to faith. “God is just going out ahead of us to do this,” Turner said of the revitalization.
Kevin Blackwell, executive director of the Mobile Baptist Network, who has preached at Manor, called the church “an example of the unifying power of the Gospel.” Turner's advice to pastors of struggling churches is not to give up or work in their own strength. “Pastors can carry a lot of weight if they try to do it all themselves,” he said.
