But there is a role that we as Christians must play to heal our nation. We must invest in the souls and the hearts of men. We do this by financially supporting and getting involved in evangelism. For God is the only one who can radically change the heart and soul.

To the Southern Baptists, St. Louis is one of North America’s great unreached urban centers. According to the Association of Religion Data Archives, only 14.8 percent of metro St. Louis’ 2.8 million people are affiliated with an evangelical church. Nearly half of the population is not affiliated with any religious group.

The local Southern Baptists have a plan to change that.

Through their Send North America: St. Louis initiative, local Southern Baptist churches have already begun efforts to start more than 75 new churches in the city during the next five years. Their church planting efforts are not without a cause. They believe that as a result of these new churches crime in the city will go down, dropout rates will decrease, and teen pregnancies will go down. “These things are heart issues,” says Kenny Petty, a Southern Baptist church planter in St. Louis, the Baptist Press quoted him as saying. “And there’s only one thing that can deal with the heart of man and that’s the Gospel of Jesus Christ.”

I believe the Southern Baptists have the right idea. Christians need to believe in the power of the gospel to change the hearts of men. In doing so, we will change the hearts of our cities for the better: “If anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation; the old has gone, the new has come!” the Bible says (2 Corinthians 5:17, NIV).

[Editor’s note: This article is incomplete. The source for this document was originally published on Baptist Press—however, the link (URL) to the original article is unavailable and has been removed. Also, one or more original URLs (links) are broken; those links have been removed.]