A Southern Baptist missionary in Southeast Asia asks for
volunteers to dig wells and instantaneously 600 churches are mobilized to
meet the request.
That is just one of the things the Global Missions Center of
Bell Shoals Baptist Church in Brandon, Fla. does to support Southern Baptist
missionaries around the world.
A Southern Baptist missionary in Southeast Asia asks for
volunteers to dig wells and instantaneously 600 churches are mobilized to
meet the request.
That is just one of the things the Global Missions Center of
Bell Shoals Baptist Church in Brandon, Fla. does to support Southern Baptist
missionaries around the world.
The Bell Shoals missions center was started in 1998 and is
the first of its kind among Southern Baptist churches. More than 200 volunteer
and paid staffers work in its various ministries. Two other missions centers
have become operational this year, in Hampton, Va., and Louisville, Ky.
The Southern Baptist International Mission Board hopes to have
20 such centers throughout the United States to give firsthand, front-line support
to missionaries.
Three years ago, board leaders put together the Global Missions Center idea
to make missions more visible and doable for the local church. The idea has
not been embraced by all, including some who warn that it could run counter
to the idea of Southern Baptist cooperating with one another to do more than
they could do on their own.
However, Bells Shoals Missions Pastor Jim Kirk says the idea
has helped revitalize the missions vision among his church members. For 150
years “weve depended on the (International Mission Board) in Richmond,
Va., to be doing missions for the local church,” he says. “The (board)
has been a sending unit, if you will, and probably one of the best in the world.
We have 5,000 missionaries on the field today.”
The problem is that the system has made missions less personal
to the average Southern Baptist, Kirk says. “We have continued to send
our missionaries, and we have just simply lost contact with them – out
of sight, out of mind. … We didnt know what was going on with our field
missionary personnel although we continued to finance them. So, the idea was
to bring missions back locally to the church where people would know who our
missionaries are, where they are serving, what kind of conditions they are working
under and what kind of people groups theyre working with.”
The first phase was to develop an information-based center
where persons could learn about missions. The center is stocked with up-to-date
materials, including audio and video tapes, computers with e-mail capability,
murals of the continents, world artifacts and books about missions.
Also on hand are materials about church planting movements,
steps in sending a missionary to the field, information on unreached people
groups and research aids. “We made it a comfortable place so people in
our local church can come in from day to day and find out about anything thats
going on around the world – Judea, Samaria and the uttermost parts –
who Southern Baptists missionary personnel are, where they are serving
and what they are doing,” Kirk emphasizes.
The center also does information workshops to help people “plug
in and find out whats going on,” Kirk says.
Kirk estimates the church has about 50 missionaries it is in
contact with on a weekly basis. “After we were able to educate our church
– if you will, to mobilize our church to be on missions –
then we started doing projects for the field. People like to do things with
their hands. So we began to do projects stateside that would help our personnel
overseas.”
Previously, most of those projects had been done from International
Mission Board headquarters, Kirk explains.
Now, the Bell Shoals congregation does newsletters for missionaries,
volunteers type booklets for them, the church sends materials to them and members
do research for them stateside. For instance, the church has:
Researched data for well-digging projects in Africa.
Researched shrimp farming for a missionary in Thailand
who wanted to teach natives how to raise shrimp.
Raised money to buy 20,000 pairs of eyeglasses
for needy people in Benin, West Africa.
Began a project to send sandals to people in Uganda
who are getting dangerous parasites from going barefoot.
Encrypted messages for international missionaries
who need secure e-mails.
Linked by computer and e-mail to missionaries and to more than
600 churches across the nation, the center can match requests from missionaries
quickly with volunteers. And when missionaries share needs, “weve
got a network here with over 500 intercessory prayer warriors,” Kirk says.
Missions has proven contagious among Bell Shoals church members,
he affirms. “I can say for a fact, two years ago we were sleeping. Today,
we have awakened, and we are moving and growing. And God is leading us every
day to discover that place, in different areas of the world, where he wants
us to be plugged into.” (BP)