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Ten years ago, Ken Massey was welcomed to Greensboro's First Baptist Church as a baby-boomer pastor who would bring more young people into the church. A decade later, the lines around his eyes are etched a little deeper, but the lanky Texan's smile is as quick as ever.

"Yes," Massey immediately answers when asked if there are more young people in the church today, "but I'm not sure if I'm the one who did it!"

His confession goes to the heart of Massey's ministry at First Baptist: finding ways to enable members of the congregation to do the work of Christian ministry themselves.

Ken and Sara Massey, with children Kristen, Aaron and Adreanna, moved to Greensboro in July 1997 from Waco, Texas. The transition was more difficult than expected; just before leaving, Kristen fell seriously ill.

As they worked to learn the names of their new congregants in Greensboro, the Masseys also struggled to find a diagnosis for their daughter. Almost immediately the family began to sense the support that members of First Baptist would provide. Ken commented that every pastor fears his children being "turned off" to church, but he credits the congregation with allowing his own children to grow and develop their personalities without having unfair expectations heaped upon them.

Today, all three Massey children remained involved in their faith communities: Kristen at First Baptist; Aaron as a student at Baylor University; and Adreanna as a freshman at Wake Forest University.

After his initial visit to First Baptist, Massey realized that the church needed a renewed sense of purpose if it were going to remain a vibrant Christian community. Looking out from the pulpit, Massey remembers wondering, "Where is everybody?"

Two Sunday morning services had divided the congregation. Massey's first goal was to merge the two into one 10:30 service, which helped fill empty pews and assure visitors of the church's vitality.

Then came the "Heritage and Hope" campaign to make the church physically more accessible and to renovate the aging sanctuary.

"When done," Massey observed, the congregation "would see what we had been able to accomplish and would sense the unity we needed" to help move the church forward into a new century.

Next came examining the church programs. Realizing spiritual gifts, expanding family life activities, increasing participation in mission activities, and strengthening Christian education became important strategic steps in attracting and keeping young families involved in church life. Massey fashioned a strong staff to help in the areas of music, youth, education and missions.

"We are a community gathered together to worship God," Massey notes, "and then going out into the world to deal with the real brokenness we find there."

Massey worries that since the 1960s churches have fretted over issues of style -- kinds of music or ways of preaching, for example -- at the expense of substance. "We need to reclaim the historic substance of the church," Massey asserts, by focusing on "the formation of character and the building of relationships."

Connecting with people new to the church requires recognition that young people who come to First Baptist may not necessarily share a Baptist background. For Massey, this means asking how important it will be to maintain a traditional Baptist identity. "'Baptist' used to be the noun by which we identified ourselves," Massey comments. "I would like to see it used more as an adjective to describe what kind of Christian we are."

Ken's work would be hard to imagine without the help of his wife Sara, whom Ken describes as "every bit as much a minister as I am."

Sara's ministry goes beyond supporting her husband, as anyone who listens to the music at First Baptist knows. Besides playing both piano and flute, Sara also sings and leads a bell choir.

After 10 years in a church with a 150-year history, Ken has already served as one of First Baptist Greensboro's longest-tenured pastors. Asked if he has begun to think about a legacy, Ken muses that he wants "to be the guy that convinces this church that the pastor is only one of many who do the work of the church."

The writer is a member of First Baptist Church.