Nate Adams and the IBSA leadership team guide ministry to revitalize churches, plant new churches, and advance the gospel in Illinois. With a renewed focus on revitalization, IBSA is helping churches grow strong, even as bringing a gospel witness in the current culture becomes more challenging. Watch the video, “Illinois Focus.”
Pray for IBSA leaders and 10 zone consultants who minister to Baptists in every corner of Illinois.
Imagine a place in America where people have never heard the gospel. Imagine a growing town with no church to share the Good News of Jesus. That place is Illinois, and that community is Pingree Grove—rather, it was. Now, church planter R.T. Maldaner and City of Joy Church are taking the gospel to Pingree Grove, with the help of IBSA church planting strategists.
People in Pingree Grove are catching a vision of what it would be like to see their community transformed. The spiritual need there, and across Illinois, is at the heart of the 2018 Mission Illinois Offering & Week of Prayer.
Acts 1:8 commissions believers in Christ to share the gospel everywhere, from their home towns to the ends of the earth. Tucked into that call is “Judea,” which modern readers often translate to mean our state. Our Judea is spiritually needy, with millions who don’t know Christ, and at least 200 places in need of a new church.
13 million people call Illinois home. More than 8 million of them do not know Christ.
Baptists have long been people of vision, especially for missions. We give cooperatively to send missionaries to North America’s largest cities, and to remote villages around the world. Here in Illinois, people need the truth of Christ just as desperately. Imagine whole towns and cities transformed. Churches made stronger by members intentionally living out the gospel, and sharing it with their neighbors. Lives changed—for eternity.
The Mission Illinois Offering is a lifeline to vital ministries and missions here. Your MIO offering helps start new churches, strengthen existing congregations, and train people to share the gospel in their neighborhoods and beyond.
In our state of great need, we have a compelling vision—to see the gospel transform lives, churches, towns, and cities.
Many IBSA churches will observe the Mission Illinois Offering & Week of Prayer Sept. 9-16. Your church should have received an offering kit in the mail, and additional resources are available at missionillinois.org.
If your church is planning to collect the offering for the first time, or the first time in a while, the IBSA ministry staff will gladly help you communicate with your church about the vital nature of state missions. Please contact the Church Communications Team at (217) 391-3119 or request a speaker online.
In our state of great need, we have a compelling vision—to see the gospel transform lives, churches, towns, and cities.
Doug Munton, Senior Pastor of First Baptist Church of O’Fallon, Illinois
Though I have shared the gospel message many times, I can still be afraid to share my faith with others. I’m pretty sure I’m not alone. I’ve heard many others express that same anxiety. Here are some reasons we might be afraid to share our faith and what to do about it.
We worry it won’t be well-received. I’ve actually had very few people who were offended that I tried to share the gospel with them. That doesn’t mean they all trust the Lord when I witness. It just means that people are frequently more interested than you might think.
Often, I ask for permission to share the gospel by saying something like, “Can I tell what the Bible says about how you can have a relationship with God?” or something like that. A few say “no” to that question. But many people are willing to at least hear the message.
We worry we won’t be able to answer their questions. It is true that we can’t always answer all the questions people ask about faith. Sometimes we have to say, “I don’t know” or “Let me find out more about that.” But we don’t have to know everything about everything to be able to share what we know.
And, all questions are not the same. Some questions people ask are more theoretical. Some are excuses. Some are genuine questions that need to be dealt with carefully. Often I find myself saying, “I don’t know the answer to that fully and will need to get back with you on it. But can I tell you what the Bible says about how you can know Jesus?” If possible, I want people to be able to hear the basic gospel message fully, even if I can’t fully answer every question they might ask.
We worry about what others will think of us. Let’s face it. This one can be a big part of our fear of sharing the gospel. After all, like many of you, I can be something of a people pleaser. But God reminds us that he wants to use us to be his ambassadors. In other words, our primary thought should be on what he thinks and not on what someone else thinks.
Remember that telling others is the natural result of what we believe. We are beggars who have found the bread of life. It is only natural that we want other beggars to find that same bread. While we can’t make them eat, it is our compassion that leads us to tell them about this life-giving bread. We should be kind and caring and loving in our sharing, but our primary focus should be on doing what the Lord wants us to do.
We worry we might mess up and are unsure how to make the gospel clear to them. I don’t want to add confusion to those already living in spiritual confusion. This is one of the reasons why a sound method of sharing the gospel is helpful and healthy. Learning a solid method can keep us on track and help us avoid confusing those who are hearing the gospel.
There are dozens of great tools for sharing the gospel. Whether it is the Romans Road or 3 Circles or Can We Talk or any other biblically sound method, these tools can help you to share the gospel in an understandable way. A solid methodology can help us overcome the fear of not knowing how to share.
If you have had any of these fears, or others, you are not alone. But, with God’s help, you can be a witness of God’s grace to others. Don’t let fear keep you from following the Lord’s command to share the gospel. And don’t let it keep you from the joy of learning that God uses people like us—fears and all—to accomplish his purposes.
Doug Munton is pastor of First Baptist Church in O’Fallon. This column first appeared at BPNews.net.
Elizabeth Young
For the third time in 14 years, Arizona Southern Baptists will welcome the larger Southern Baptist family to Phoenix in June.
When Phoenix was chosen to host the Southern Baptist Convention’s annual meeting the first time in 2003, we were more than a little surprised, given our reputation for high summertime temperatures. But with Baptists’ repeated visits, we figured the word must have gotten out that, given our low humidity, our average 102-106 degree June temperature isn’t as bad as “back home” for a lot of folks.
We’re delighted when the family comes to town. We hope, for many, it’s a reminder that Southern Baptist work does exist outside of the Deep South and west of the Continental Divide. Illinois Baptists may feel the same way about recognition of Southern Baptists north of the Mason-Dixon Line.
While we want to offer a warm welcome to the family, we sincerely pray that our guests will remember they are on a mission field. We pray for a quiet, peaceful annual meeting so that we don’t have to explain to our lost neighbors why feuding Baptists, or Baptists engaged in culture wars, made the local news. When you’re up to your eyeballs in lost people, it puts a different perspective on priorities of concern.
Illinois Baptists probably understand this, too. Although we have some differences, we seem to have a lot in common.
You have more people—almost 13 million to our 6.9 million—but we have more land—nearly 114,000 square miles to your almost 58,000. You have more churches—nearly 1,000 to our about 450—but we have similar church-to-population ratios—one church for every 13,000 people in Illinois and one for every 15,000 in Arizona.
Both of our states have one large metropolitan area that encompasses two-thirds or more of the state’s population. And whether it’s Chicagoland or greater Phoenix, also known as the Valley of the Sun, the city is a massive sea of people who don’t know Jesus as savior.
Whether on not you make the trek to the Grand Canyon State this summer, our message to you is the same. We’re drawing from Paul’s Macedonian Call in Acts 16:9 and inviting you to “Come over…and help us.”
Consider what God is calling you to do:
• Pray for God’s work in our vast state.
• Partner with an Arizona church.
• Plant a church in Arizona.
May God give all of us a “Macedonian” vision for Arizona—and beyond!
Elizabeth Young is director of communications for the Arizona Southern Baptist Convention and the editor of Portraits magazine.
COMMENTARY | Nate Adams
Editor’s note: This column is the second in a three-part series, interpreting IBSA’s 2013 state mission offering theme statement: Mission Illinois – Churches Together, Advancing the Gospel. Read Nate’s first column here.
Throughout September, and during the September 15-22 week of prayer in particular, churches across our state are joining together to focus on our Illinois mission field, where at least 8.2 million people don’t yet have a personal relationship with Jesus Christ. In addition to praying, most churches participate in the “Mission Illinois Offering,” all of which goes to work right here in our state to push back lostness, and to assist missionaries and churches in disciple-making evangelism and church planting.
The theme statement we’ve chosen to describe Mission Illinois is “Churches Together, Advancing the Gospel.”
The second word of that theme – together – speaks of the multiplied strength, impact, and growth that happen when churches embrace cooperative missions. The power of what churches can do together far exceeds the power of what any church can do individually.
Individually, an Illinois church might work for years to help establish one new congregation somewhere else in the state. But last year, Illinois “churches together” started 28 new congregations.
Individually, an Illinois church might be too far away from a college campus to have a meaningful ministry, even to its own students there. But Illinois “churches together” provide Baptist collegiate ministries on dozens of college campuses.
Individually, an Illinois church might be able to equip a handful of its members to go on an annual mission trip or two. But Illinois “churches together” sent more than 27,000 missions volunteers last year, a 34% increase over the previous year.
Individually, an Illinois church might baptize five or ten new believers, or even a hundred if it were one of our larger churches. But Illinois “churches together” welcomed more than 5,000 new believers into the Kingdom of God last year.
Those kinds of results go beyond mere cumulative totals. They are the synergistic result of us believing together, praying together, giving together, and working together as a Baptist family of churches here in Illinois. But let me cite another noteworthy example, or rather examples, of what “together” means.
Individually, an Illinois church might be flooded, or lose its pastor, or be divided in conflict, or be confronted with a lawsuit. That church might simply not know how to respond to a crisis or traumatic event, or it might need help improving its Sunday School, or evaluating its facilities, or hosting its first Vacation Bible School in years.
Illinois “churches together” provide one another with our statewide staff and resources so that each church is only a phone call, e-mail, or visit away from getting whatever kind of assistance each one needs to remain strong, or in some cases, to survive.
One of the many catchy tunes embedded in my memory from childhood days of watching “Mister Rogers’ Neighborhood” is the song, “Everything Grows Together.” Mr. Rogers taught us that: “Your toes grow as your feet grow as your legs grow as your fingers grow as your hands grow as your arms grow as your ears grow as your nose grows as the rest of you grows, because you’re all one piece.”
How does everything grow, even in the ministry of our churches? Together. Why? Because we’re all one piece. We know the joys and benefits of interdependence. As you consider your gift to the Mission Illinois Offering this year, I hope it will be in part because you see the amazing value of what can only be done by churches together.
Nate Adams is executive director of the Illinois Baptist State Association. Respond to his column at IllinoisBaptist@IBSA.org.
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