Ross Harvest | Presentation

Introductions

Family

My name is Jason Self, I’d like to introduce my family here: My wife Kate, 10 year old son Brody and my 4 year old daughter Audrey. Our Goal is to plant Harvest Baptist Church in Ross, Ohio.

Salvation

To quickly introduce myself:

I grew up in-and-out of church over at Friendship. For better or worse there is a real possibility that some of you might recognize me. But, despite a false profession I made as a kid, I wasn’t saved until I was in my late 20’s. In 2007 God used all of that truth I had been exposed to over the years of being in and out of church and just broke my heart over my sin. And kneeling on my bed in our little one bedroom apartment I surrendered my life to the Lord Jesus Christ.

I am very blessed to say that less than a year later, in 2008 my wife Kate was saved as well; And I am very happy to say that our kids have only ever known church life.

Ministry

God has seen fit to use me in a number of ministries at Southland Baptist Church. I became involved in Children’s Ministries: Camp, Master Club’s, Preaching in Children’s Church. And then Pastor Love, my Pastor at Southland, taught a Homiletics class, it’s a class really that focused on preparing sermons and preaching. That was back in 2008. From that point on God stirred something in me.

Burdens?

I completely understand the term people use, but I am reluctant to call the work in Ross, a burden. What Paul writes in 1 Timothy 3:1 seems more appropriate.

1 Timothy 3:1 KJV 1900

This is a true saying, If a man desire the office of a bishop, he desireth a good work.

It’s a desire that God put in my heart. Starting a church is something I couldn’t shake for almost a decade. If what I am saying makes sense, It would be more of a burden to not start this church than anything else. And it was liek Proverbs 13 says in verse 12

Proverbs 13:12a KJV 1900

12 Hope deferred maketh the heart sick: But when the desire cometh, it is a tree of life.

Looking back I understand that God had a lot of work to do on me. In that time I was able to serve as a Trustee and in 2014 I was ordained as a Deacon at Southland Baptist Church. And I learned a lot and grew a lot in those ministries, especially in my time as a deacon.

Ross, Ohio

Rural?

My family and I moved just outside of Ross, Ohio about 4 years ago. This community is our home.

A lot of people think of Ross as a rural area. A lot of it is. I can walk to several corn fields from my house. What a lot f people don’t realize is that there are several very large neighborhoods tucked away in the area. Ross Trails, Ross Estates, Venice, and Fort Scott.

The Need

I recieved a report that claims that in a 5 mile radius from where we will start, there are 48,000 people. That feels a little inflated to me, but just from what I could gather on my own, I found 30,000 people. To put that in perspective: You are probably familiar with Colerain Township. Colerain Township has a population of about 58,000 people and at least 10 Baptist Churches that I know of. Ross has 1.

The Competition

There are some other churches around. Presbyterian, Methodist, Catholic etc. The church that gets my attention the most is White Oak Christian Church. White Oak Christian is a big church on the West Side, and they have been using the auditorium in Ross Senior High as a satellite for a few years now. From what I understand they have broken ground and will be building soon.

I am not going to try and hide it, I cyber stalking White Oak Christian Church. And while I was cyber stalking them, I found this post: I don’t know if you can read this or not, but it says that they had a Mega Sports Camp in June of last year and over 600 kids and families attended.

They understand what UDF and Skyline, who just built in Ross understand. This is a growing community. One of the biggest problems that they have is that the sewer system can’t keep up with the new development.

Harvest

For a while it didn’t look good, but the school we wanted to meet in has given us the go-ahead and is letting us use a space that we thought was going to be unavailable.

We had a struggle to figure out what to do about chairs. The school told me that they didn’t even have a place to store them if we provided them and let the school use them whenever they wanted. So that meant we were going to need chairs and a trailer to haul the chairs. But at the last minute the school came up with chairs we could use as well.

The most basic needs are met, and our plan is to start on October 18th, one way or another. We have a roof an we have chairs. We have a PA system too, but that wouldn’t have held us back. Brother Wally knows my Dad and has probably met some of my extended family so he can verify this, God has only one way to make Self’s and that is to make us loud. Which is probably something to pray for my wife about, we have 2 kids God has made loud as well.

What I don’t know

There are a lot of things I am not sure how are going to work out, but I have faith that when the time comes God will provide for our needs

As for a couple of specific things I would ask you to pray about:

Our church just made the request for a couple of families to work with us, at least for the first year. It will probably be a lot less awkward if a guest comes and it’s only them and my wife getting preached to! So as ever please pray for laborers.

The Campus Pastor for White Oak Christian Church just sent me an email asking to meet. He is looking for ways for us to partner in our community, which I am going to have to find a gracious way of dealing with that. But they have a lot more physical resources than we do. We need prayer that God is working on people in this community to hear what we have to say, and that resources open up for us to enable us to reach as many people in the community as possible.