HEARTLAND | Illinois Mission Offering
Editor’s note: The devotional below is Day 2 of the Illinois Mission Offering and Season of Prayer, which many churches across Illinois will focus on Sept. 16-23. Sign up to receive more devotionals like the one below at IBSA.org, and watch the video below for the full story.
There are two million international people who now call Illinois home. That’s 14% of our population, making the state sixth in the nation in the number of foreign-born residents. IBSA outreach to immigrants includes ministries on college campuses, where 34,000 students have come to the U.S. to study, many from countries where Christian faith is not openly practiced.
Feng Yu, a Ph.D student at Southern Illinois University, came to faith through Baptist Campus Ministry and a local congregation in Carbondale. And many of IBSA’s church plants are especially for unreached ethnic peoples who have gathered in our cities. In Chicago alone, Baptist congregations worship in more than 20 languages.
We can reach the world as these new believers in turn share their newfound faith with their families back home. As pastor Phil Nelson said, “God is bringing the nations to our doorstep; if we’re going to reach the nations, we’ve got great opportunity right here.”
Read: Ephesians 2:12-22
Pray for changed lives of international people through IBSA’s campus ministries, church planters, and churches hosting English as Second Language (ESL) classes.
iB2 News 