A launch pad for missions

              Red Springs: A former T-shirt factory in Robeson County has become a magnet for Baptists. The T-shirts are long gone, but the Wal-Mart-sized 52,000 sq. ft. building has been converted to the Red Springs Mission Camp.  The Baptist State Convention bought the property in 2008 in partnership with NC Baptist Men.  More than 500 Baptist volunteers worked during 2008 to convert the building to serve Gospel purposes.

             Equipped with bunk bed bedrooms to sleep more than 200 people, a kitchen for food preparation and lots of warehouse space for tools and equipment, the Red Springs property has become a launch pad for NC Baptist volunteer teams.

             The teams come from across the state, stay at Red Springs for low  prices and from there head out across Robeson, Hoke, Bladen and Scotland counties to tackle projects ranging from direct evangelism to mowing lawns and cleaning or repairing the houses of elderly people.

            To direct the Red Springs camp, Baptist Men turned to Larry Osborne, another veteran Baptist Men worker.  Granite Falls native Larry ran a flooring business until he and his wife, Teresa, made a commitment to full-time ministry.  They spent three years coordinating North Carolina Baptist teams who went to Sri Lanka to help the country recover from a deadly tsunami.  Then they spent two years in New York City coordinating some 40 volunteer teams a year for the Graffiti ministry there.  After two years living in hectic Manhattan, the Osbornes moved to the utter quiet of Robeson County, from a mid-town apartment two blocks from New York’s biggest housing projects, to a camper trailer parked in the Red Springs parking lot. 

            There are always ongoing mission projects available for volunteers to pursue — projects that would make a difference in one or more lives.  But Osborne reminds every team they’re not there just to help, but to share their faith in ways to make an eternal difference.  “It’s more than fixing the floor or a bathroom.  It’s about building the relationship with the families,” he said.

            Already scores of volunteer teams have worked from Red Springs and the facility has been used for several missions conferences. 

 A mission camp in the city

                 SHELBY, NC — It was an amazing find:  43 acres of prime property right in Shelby, just off South Lafayette Street, a few blocks of the U.S. 74 bypass.   The Baptist State Convention and Baptist Men were able to buy the land for a good price and that is going to become the second mission camp.

                Unlike the Red Springs Mission Camp, in which an existing building was converted for Baptist use, the Shelby Mission Camp is being developed from the dirt up.  Development of the Shelby camp is being directed by Eddie Williams, a veteran Baptist Men worker who oversaw development of the Red Springs Missions Camp during 2008.  Earlier he and his wife, Martha, spent an intensive 19 months in Katrina-stricken Gulfport, Miss., helping coordinate the work of more than 35,000 volunteers in building 715 houses.

                Eddie Williams unrolled the site development plan across the back of his pick-up and pointed out how a new entrance is being built off Lafayette Street.   “By the end of 2009 the 43 acres was sprouting new grass and new buildings and it began to look like a mission camp, we’ll be able to accommodate 200 volunteers.” said Williams.

                Cleveland County was selected because of its high unemployment and on-going social needs, he said.  Williams has been visiting city and county government offices and churches in the area to tell people about the mission camp; response has been positive.

                The Shelby location will put inexpensive missions trip possibilities within easy driving range of hundreds of Baptist State Convention churches. 

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Do you think everybody in the whole world should know about Jesus?

Hopefully, you answered yes.  That’s because God wants us to help tell everybody in the world about Jesus.  That includes people even in far off South Africa.  How can we help tell them about Jesus?  We have to send people to talk to them. Sending people to tell others about Jesus?  That is what we call missions. And that’s what the North Carolina Missions Offering helps do — it helps people in South Africa hear the Good News about Jesus!

Do you think all of Africa is hot all the time?

No so! Look how the people in the picture are bundled up. This is South Africa, where it gets cold sometimes.   This round church may look different from yours, but it’s a church just the same.  That’s because a church is a group of people who follow Jesus as Lord!

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This woman in South Africa is happy her grandchild now  has a church nearby where they can go learn about Jesus!

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Can we do more together in communicating the Gospel than we can individually?  I think we can!  Joining together as Baptists in North Carolina, one of our greatest strengths is our commitment to “doing together that which we could not do as well alone.”

Is there any church in our state that can fund 155 church planters in a given year?  Not individually!  But churches like yours and mine, working together, can impact communities for Christ through effective, evangelistic, and reproducing churches.  That’s why your contribution to the North Carolina Missions Offering (NCMO) is so critical each year, especially during the emphasis month of September!  This year, 28% of the North Carolina Missions Offering will go to support new church plants.  

Greater Joy Baptist Church reaches hundreds in Rocky Mount, NC and is only one of the many churches supported by the North Carolina Missions Offering.  Since their first service on the first Sunday in September of 2008, the church has grown from 12 to around 850.  Your sacrificial giving to the NCMO is instrumental in helping start many ministries within this church to reach their community for Christ.  Please listen to Pastor Shelton Daniel share his heart about ministry.

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North Carolina is home to 5.5 million people who do not have a relationship with Christ.  The goal this year for the North Carolina Missions Offering is $2.1 million.

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During 2009 the Baptist State Convention of NC started 98 new churches, which equates to starting a new church every three or four days on average.  About half the new churches started in 2009 were ethnic churches.  That means the churches are reaching out to some language/ethnic group, the same sort of group the KJV Bible refers to as “nations” in the Great Commission given at the end of Matthew 28.

Please pray for Htoo Lay Dwe, Karen church planter in New Bern.  The Karen people are originally from Tibet or Burma.

Please pray for this people group as they adjust to America, that they will hear the Gospel in their heart language and be forever changed.

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 July 30th, 2010  Chuck Register   No comments

See how NC Baptist Men are responding to Haiti’s devastating earthquake in January, first with medical workers and now construction teams, made possible by North Carolina Missions Offering funding.   Please pray for Scott and Janet Daughtry who arrived in Haiti on February 2 and are serving as our long term coordinators.  NCMO emphasis is the entire month of September.

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 July 28th, 2010  Chuck Register   No comments

This is our 2010 North Carolina Missions Offering  theme and it is a powerful reminder of the great responsibility we have as North Carolina Baptists to impact our community, and the world, with the Gospel of Jesus Christ.

Missions is the key — it means partnering with God in getting a lost world redeemed through Jesus Christ.  A missions-minded church will be a church in motion, a church moving forward in Kingdom service!  NCMO is one major way your church can give, go and pray!

 We want to thank all the people across North Carolina for their support of the North Carolina Missions Offering.

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So, what’s the “rest of the story”? What happened to that Cooperative Program (CP) supporting Pastor who had his life changed on the dusty streets of an El Salvadoran village? Well, he developed a holistic, “both/and” , global missions funding strategy that incorporated the benefits of both the Cooperative Program of the Southern Baptist Convention and a customized, contextualized local church missions approach.

This holistic, “both/and” missions funding strategy can best be observed in the life of the First Baptist Church, Gulfport, MS; the church this blogger served as Senior Pastor from 1999-2008. Throughout her history FBC, Gulfport had always been a strong supporter of the Cooperative Program. A minimum of 10% of her undesignated gifts went to CP, “no questions asked” and an additional 2+% went to her local Baptist association.  Then, in 1999, a renewed focus on reaching the nations led the church members to begin  giving sacrificially to the two primary mission offerings in Southern Baptist life – one for global missions and one for North American missions. In 4 out of the next 6 years, FBC ranked among the top 100 churches in the SBC in giving to the SBC’s global missions offering and exhibited similar giving toward the offering for North American missions.

During those same years, FBC launched an aggressive customized and contextualized missions approach. We sent mission teams to 15 different countries and 8 different US states. Along with a church in Tennessee, we partnered with the International Mission Board of the SBC serving as the Strategy Coordinator for a city of one million people located in a Restricted Access Country. At home we launched Gulf Coast Community Ministries consisting of a free medical clinic and pharmacy, food bank and ESL classes.  We planted a satellite ministry north of our city that grew into a church plant and eventually became Cross Point Community Church.

Following the landfall of Hurricane Katrina in August of 2005, when the church’s facilities were destroyed, and the Senior Pastor suggested a 2% decrease in CP giving for a few years while the facilities were rebuilt, the congregation issued a resounding, “NO”.  They knew what the Senior Pastor doubted. Even as the members of the congregation were rebuilding their homes and lives following the worst natural disaster in our nation’s history, they knew they would continue to sacrificially support a holistic, “both/and” missions funding strategy.  So, CP giving remained at 10%, giving to the local Baptist association continued at 2+% and the church in partnership with the North Carolina Baptist Men, built and staffed a Volunteer Village, hosting over 2,200 volunteers conducting evangelistic relief and recovery ministry along the Gulf Coast of Mississippi. The congregation also located new facilities to replace those destroyed by the hurricane, and re-launched Gulf Coast Community Ministries. Then in 2009, as further evidence that a holistic, “both/and” missions funding strategy had now become a part of the DNA of the church, FBC without the leadership of a Senior Pastor, built an orphanage in Haiti in partnership with a non-SBC missions agency.

You see the “missions funding strategy” discussion among Southern Baptists the last few years has created a false dichotomy. It’s really not either support the Cooperative Program or create a customized and contextualized missions strategy for the local church. If the Pastor believes in and the church embraces, a “both/and” missions funding strategy, such a strategy can be implemented. A “both/and” strategy will allow the church to participate in all that God is doing around the globe through the ministries of Southern Baptists supported by the Cooperative Program and at the same time develop and support a most effective customized and contextualized missions strategy designed by the local church. In this way the local church can participate to the max in what God is doing across the globe to expand His Kingdom and glorify His name.  It’s really not either/or.  If the Pastor desires it and the people embrace it, the most effective missions funding strategy really is Both/and, both sacrificial support of the Cooperative Program and a customized, contextualized missions strategy!

So, what happened to this Cooperative Program supporting SBC pastor that changed his view of global missions – I went on my first international mission trip and it changed my life! I wish I could say my first experience with international missions happened while I was a teenager, active in my church’s student ministry, or as a seminary student, focusing on evangelism and church growth, but I must confess my first taste of global missions didn’t occur until my second pastorate.  You see, I was serving a “typical SBC church” in West Florida. We were small in size, approximately 150 in worship attendance, but we were working hard to reach our community for Christ. As I stated in Part 1, we gave 10% of our undesignated funds to the Cooperative Program and we annually received the Lottie Moon Christmas Offering for Foreign Missions and the Annie Armstrong Easter Offering for Home Missions, both key missions offerings in Southern Baptist life. To be honest, I thought we were a good missions-minded Southern Baptist church. 

Then, I was invited to travel with a team of pastors to El Salvador to engage in a week of evangelistic activities and God turned my “missions life” upside down. On the dusty streets of an El Salvadoran village, as I went door-to door inviting families to attend the viewing of an evangelistic film, God captured my heart for the world. He spoke ever so loudly through the faces of two little El Salvadoran children whose lives were trapped by religious activities and religious tradition but not by a life-transforming relationship with Jesus. Standing on the doorstep of their home, looking into the eyes of those two little boys, I heard God speak ever so clearly concerning my responsibility as a Pastor and as a Christ-follower to fulfill the Great Commission. I knew, as of that moment, it was not “enough” for the church I served to simply give money to the Cooperative Program and “let the professional missionaries do the work”.  We, our little church in the Panhandle of Florida, had a responsibility to be “on mission” for the Lord around the world and I, as an individual follower of Christ, had a responsibility to be so Great Commission oriented that my passport became an essential tool in ministry.

God used that one, 7-day, international mission trip, to change my mind and heart about missions and to guide me in developing a more holistic, local church global missions strategy. On Tuesday, I’ll share what that strategy grew to look like. Until then, grab your passport. There is some place in the world where God wants to change your life!   

This coming October, I have the privilege to teach a course entitled, Growing a Great Commission Church at Southeastern Baptist Theological Seminary in Wake Forest, NC . I am excited about this opportunity to return to the seminary classroom. You see for six years I taught evangelism at New Orleans Baptist Theological Seminary in New Orleans, LA and enjoyed my interaction with seminary students immeasurably. For the most part, seminary students are intelligent, creative, “outside the box” thinkers who challenge the status quo in the church. They ask “why” and “why not”. They long to make a difference in the world and they long to impact eternity. They have not been scarred by the heartache of ministry and their minds see no limits to what God can do through their lives for His glory. Yep, I can’t wait to spend a week with folks like that!

One topic we will examine is the development of a holistic, global missions strategy for the local church. I must confess my view on this topic has certainly changed over the last 28 years of ministry. When I graduated from seminary in 1984, I assumed my job as Pastor was to lead my church to sacrificially give to the Cooperative Program, a joint missions funding tool available to all Southern Baptist churches. The money our church gave, along with the monies given by all SBC churches, was then used to fund missionaries to reach the world for Christ. So, I led the churches I served to give over 10% of their undesignated receipts to the Cooperative Program and I am glad I did! The monies, given by thousands of Southern Baptist churches and pooled together for maximum effect, supported the ministries of: thousands of God-called missionaries serving across North America and around the world; 6 seminaries, training thousands of students to be the next generation of church leaders; countless ministries in the states within which I served – Louisiana and Florida – including Baptist hospitals providing medical care to indigent families regardless of religious belief and Baptist colleges teaching a Christian worldview to the next generation of community leaders. I felt good about our church’s sacrificial giving to the Cooperative Program because I knew we were a part of global disciple-making and only eternity would reveal the countless number of people who came to faith in Christ because of our giving.

Then, something happened that radically changed my thinking about missions giving. Check back next week. I’ll tell you all about in Part 2.

While the Embrace group was serving in Buenos Aires on our mission trip, one of the opportunities that we had was to spend some time in an orphanage ministering to children who ranged in age from a year old to nineteen years old.

Because of donations that had been given, we were able to bring with us a Bible for each child, two stuffed animals per child, and a goody bag that included a tract in Spanish, a small Spanish Christian book and some candy to give to each one of the children. Collectively we were able to give the orphanage socks, hygiene products, and a number of toys and books for the directors to distribute among the children as they deemed appropriate.

Apparently when people bring things to the orphanage there is often not enough for all of the children. From what I understood, when this happens it is a first come, first serve and some children do not receive, while others do. We were able to avoid this by ensuring we had more of everything we brought because we didn’t want any children left out.

In order to ensure that each child received a Bible, their stuffed animals, and a goody bag, the orphanage director had me write the name of each child inside the front flap of each of the Bibles. In the midst of writing the 20 names of the boys and girls, there was no set order for how the Bibles were arranged in my lap for distribution.

We began to distribute the Bibles and other items with the aid of Christine, our translator. Christine would call the name of the child and hand them their new Bible, while some of the ladies on our team gave the child their goody bag and stuffed animal.

Mid-way through the process a little six-year-old girl named Tamara burst into tears and ran to the bedrooms inside the orphanage building. Stunned we all looked at each other not entirely sure what to think.

Christine told us that Tamara thought we didn’t have anything for her. Her older sister, who must have been about eight or nine years old, began to say in Castilian, “She can have mine! I will give her mine!”

However, we did have things for Tamara – her name just had not been called yet.

The director went to find Tamara and brought her back out to us. Immediately I began to dig through the stack of Bibles in my lap to find the one with her name written in purple ink.

Christine gathered her up and explained to her that we did have things for her; her name had just not yet been called.

I have thought a lot about that scene since it happened – a young child so desperately wanting and thinking that, yet again, she had been left out.

All too often, in the midst of cynical world and society where we focus on politics and differences, we forget that there are people – with the same flesh and feelings as you and me – on each continent with a deep and wanting desire to be loved and remembered.

While many times we forget that, our Lord never does. He provides the greatest love and has graven each name in His hands (Isaiah 49:16).

I am thankful that God remembers, knows and has provided for each of us.

To read more about the Embrace International Mission Trip to Buenos Aires, Argentina, and to view more photos, please visit the following links:

Bold Voice in Buenos Aires

Little Victories Add Up For Hobsons

Prayers Answered in Beccar

Pastor, Chess Player Reaches Out in Martinez

Reflections From Tango Town

Additional photos from Embrace mission trip to Buenos Aires, Argentina