Archives For Make new sacrifices

In the presence of a pioneer

Lisa Misner —  October 29, 2018

Pioneering-200-logo-layers-260x300By Nate Adams

Not long ago, I was invited by the Springfield Convention and Visitors Bureau to represent IBSA at a local event, recognizing organizations that have helped attract business to the Springfield area. IBSA was among that group because, in both 2015 and 2018, we hosted the Midwest Leadership Summit at the Springfield Crowne Plaza, drawing more than a thousand pastors and leaders from thirteen Midwest states to nearby hotels and restaurants.

The recognition event was held at the Abraham Lincoln Museum, and much to our delight, one of the presenters was Abraham Lincoln himself. As each of us were called to the platform, a Lincoln statuette was handed to us by a statuesque, flesh-and-blood Lincoln!

Of course, all of us know that our now beloved sixteenth President has been gone for more than 150 years. Our very convincing “Lincoln interpreter” was an actor named Fritz Klein, who looks remarkably like the historic Lincoln, and whose full-time profession is now portraying him in settings all over the United States.

May we be willing to go new places, engage new people, make new sacrifices, and develop new leaders.

Even so, as I was called to the platform, I found myself feeling a bit in awe of the towering figure who smiled and handed me my little statue. At his insistence, we each paused and posed for a quick photo. And for a brief moment, the warm smile and rehearsed mannerisms of Mr. Klein made me feel as if it were Mr. Lincoln who was pleased with me, and with IBSA.

Shortly after that event, I invited Mr. Klein to come and join us at our IBSA Annual Meeting this November. For one thing, it’s hard to imagine celebrating the Land of Lincoln bicentennial without some nod to Mr. Lincoln. But more importantly, I hope the image and memory of Abraham Lincoln will remind us that he was one of our state’s earliest pioneers, and that we need that pioneering spirit in our churches today.

Pioneers are willing to go new places, engage new people, make new sacrifices, and develop new leaders. Lincoln and his family personified these pioneering qualities, but so did dozens, and then hundreds, and eventually thousands of Baptists, who entered our fledgling state with both the Gospel and the desire to establish new churches.

In the early 1800’s, evangelism, church planting, missions giving, and leadership development were not easy. And they’re not easy in the early 2000’s. Even today, these kinds of missionary endeavors aren’t usually attempted or accomplished by complacent settlers, but by courageous pioneers.

By the time the IBSA Annual Meeting convenes in Maryville November 7-8, we hope to celebrate 200 years of statehood by also celebrating at least 200 Baptist churches who are embracing one or more of these “pioneering spirit” challenges. (Your church can register for these at www.pioneeringspirit.org.) A little more than 180 churches have embraced one or more of these challenges already, and we are hopeful that more than 200 will do so by the end of the IBSA Annual Meeting.

I don’t expect to have the kind of impact on Illinois or history that Mr. Lincoln did. But I do want to be the kind of pioneer that continues to bring both the Gospel and new Baptist churches to the places in Illinois that don’t have them yet. Welcoming new believers into heaven is so much more important than welcoming new business into Springfield. And of course the celebration event will be hosted by Someone so much more statuesque than Mr. Lincoln.

Nate Adams is executive director of the Illinois Baptist State Association. Respond at IllinoisBaptist@IBSA.org.

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Make New Sacrifices: It’s time to teach the basics

Lisa Misner —  May 14, 2018

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By Eric Reed

Roger Marshall, pastor of First Baptist Church of Effingham, said at a recent IBSA meeting, “People used to say, ‘We can do more for the Cooperative Program.’ Now they ask, ‘Why do we support the Cooperative Program?’”

He’s right. No longer can we assume that people appreciate the Cooperative Program, or understand it, or even know what it is. So when we ask our church to make sacrifices for the sake of missions, many aren’t sure what we’re talking about.

It’s time to teach the basics again.

Have you considered how often bring the Cooperative Program before your congregation? When speaking about vision, Rick Warren used to say he had to restate the vision at Saddleback every 30 days. If reaching the world with the gospel is part of our vision, then the same applies to Cooperative Program. People need to know that their offering supports the most effective missions ministry in the world.

Consider these ways of sharing about CP:

  • Distribute the IBSA bulletin insert. Delivered six times a year, it’s provided free to IBSA churches. E-mail Communications@IBSA.org.
  • Include a short note in your church newsletter or on your website.
  • Tell an SBC or IBSA missions story in a sermon, and mention that your church supports that work through CP.
  • Hold a new members’ class. Keep it short. Include CP. (A 90-minute seminar is a popular format.)
  • Add a short CP fact as part of the offering time. Pray for a missionary or country by name, and mention the Cooperative Program.
  • Observe CP Sunday in April or October. Put in on the church calendar.
  • Hold a missions fair. Give CP a table or booth.

If we are to make new sacrifices for the sake of the gospel, pastor will lead the way. If we are to keep funds flowing to support missions, then we must educate our people about Cooperative Program. It’s the way we get things done.

Learn more at PioneeringSpirit.org

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Make New Sacrifices: Getting Started

ib2newseditor —  March 19, 2018

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By Eric Reed, Church Communication Team

Pioneering Spirit logoThank you for accepting the Pioneering Spirit challenge to “Make New Sacrifices.” This commitment is about doing whatever it takes to advance the gospel through missions. Specifically, it’s a commitment to increase missions giving through the Cooperative Program.

After signing up, one Illinois pastor shared the challenge with his church. In recent years the church had faced some financial difficulties, and the result had been cuts in CP giving. When he shared the challenge with them, the church agreed to double their CP giving from 3% of undesignated offerings to 6%, with a pledge to raise it by 1% each year until they reach 10%.

For churches on tight budgets (and aren’t we all!), that represents sacrifice. But when the pastor made need known, the church rose to the call.

April 8 is Cooperative Program Sunday. That Sunday, or any Sunday in April, will be a good time to start making the need known: 8 million or more people in Illinois do not know Jesus, 5 billion worldwide are lost. And Southern Baptists’ Cooperative Program is the most effective channel for sending missionaries and sharing Christ.

Encouragers: As you get started “making new sacrifices,” consider these ways to encourage your church:

  • Awareness of the need
  • Ability to make a difference
  • Actual stories through personal testimony and videos
  • Aspiration to greater service.

We’ll cover these topics in future newsletters. In the meantime, please think about how you will bring the need for sacrificial giving through CP before your church monthly, starting in April. Call on me, if we can help.

And if your church hasn’t made this commitment, please pray about it. God blesses those who support missions (Phil. 4:19).

Downloadable resources:

Meet Southern Baptists

Mission Illinois Bulletin Insert

Annual Report video

CP Rant video 2

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Churches take up the challenge

ib2newseditor —  March 19, 2018

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Just three months into the new year, 115 churches have accepted the Pioneering Spirit Challenge. That’s more than halfway to IBSA’s 2018 goal of 200 or more churches. But for those churches—and for all of us—the work is just beginning.

The Pioneering Spirit Challenge, timed to coincide with Illinois’ bicentennial year, seeks to bring frontier fortitude to Baptist work today. Our forebears lived in trying times, meeting danger head-on, and forging a new state. Many of them brought solid Christian faith to the hard-won territory, and many of those first Illinoisans were Baptists.

If the concepts of wilderness, lostness, and battle seem familiar, it’s because they describe our spiritual frontier today—200 years later.

“It will take as much courage for today’s believers to bring the gospel to the millions in our cities, suburbs, and crossroads communities as it did for first founders to carve out those communities starting at the time of statehood,” said Van Kicklighter, IBSA’s associate executive director for church planting. “Winning over wilderness has gotten no easier in 200 years.”

“We have been encouraged by how many pastors and churches are taking this commitment—and the critical challenge to advance the gospel in our perilous times—seriously.”

Against the reality of at least 8 million lost people in Illinois, Pioneering Spirit engages IBSA churches in church planting, baptisms, missions giving, and leadership development.

Kicklighter and his team have identified 200 locations in Illinois in need of an evangelical church. So far, 82 churches have accepted the challenge to “Go new places,” praying for or partnering with a new church plant.

In addition, 111 churches have said they will “Engage new people,” taking steps to increase their church’s annual baptisms. The “One GRAND Sunday” emphasis on April 8, encourage 1,000 baptisms statewide, is one aspect of this “engagement.” It is led by Pat Pajak, associate executive director for evangelism.

Another 66 churches said they will “Make new sacrifices,” by increasing missions giving through the Cooperative Program. And 111 churches will “Develop new leaders,” preparing tomorrow’s pastors, missionaries, and church leaders to continue the work in the decades ahead.

In all, 115 churches accepted one or more of the challenges since the Pioneering Spirit initiative was announced at the IBSA Annual Meeting in November.

“We have been encouraged by how many pastors and churches are taking this commitment—and the critical challenge to advance the gospel in our perilous times—seriously,” said Kicklighter.

One example in the church planting area: Community Southern Baptist Church in Clay City has taken on the challenge of planting a church in Carroll County. That is one of 10 counties in Illinois with no Southern Baptist congregation. Pastor David Starr told Kicklighter that his church began praying about making the commitment after seeing IBSA’s “blue map” that illustrates lostness in the state.

To learn more about the four Pioneering Spirit challenges, and to register your own church’s commitment to one or more of them, visit PioneeringSpirit.org. Together, we will –

  • Go new places – praying for or partnering with a new church plant
  • Engage new people – taking steps to increase your church’s annual baptisms
  • Make new sacrifices – increasing missions giving through the Cooperative Program
  • Develop new leaders – preparing tomorrow’s pastors, missionaries, and church leaders

– Eric Reed

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What is Pioneering Spirit?

ib2newseditor —  November 28, 2017

Churches urged to take lessons from Illinois’ early settlers

You know the pioneer in the video you made, Stephen Stilley?” the woman said. “I’m his great niece. Seven greats.”

Stilley was a veteran of the War of 1812 who returned home to Illinois to continue the church planting work he started before joining the army at age 47. Stilley’s name is on a plaque outside First Baptist Church of Elizabethtown, founded in 1806. It’s IBSA’s oldest continually operating congregation, and one of four IBSA churches that predate Illinois’ statehood in 1818.

FBC Elizabethtown

“When I heard his name, my ears perked up,” said Sheila Jessen, assistant for the Baptist Foundation of Illinois. “My maiden name is Stilley.

“I went home and looked it up in our genealogy,” she continued. “My great-great-great-great-great-great grandfather John was Stephen Stilley’s brother. I’m the niece of a Baptist pioneer,” she said, her eyes welling up a little. “It’s beginning to make sense why I’m at IBSA.”

The descendant of one of the pioneering forebears was having a moment that could be common to all Illinois Baptists: realizing that we are descendants of hearty stock, both spiritual and literal, and in their pioneering DNA we find the fortitude to inhabit the land and build the Kingdom.

With the observation of Illinois’ 200th anniversary set to begin in 2018, IBSA offered a new call to spread the gospel across the state.

“What are we going to do to get off of the flat line we are on as Illinois Baptists?” Executive Director Nate Adams asked at the Annual Meeting. Adams outlined a four-fold plan to engage churches in new commitments to church planting, evangelism, missions-giving, and leader development. “We think these are at the very core of what it means to have a pioneering spirit.”

As with the pioneers in the early 19th century, the need of the 21st century is brave souls willing to do whatever it takes to stake new territory, taking the gospel where it has never been before. The goal is to have 200 or more churches committed to each of the four challenges.

Roles and role models
Throughout the meeting, the theme was interpreted with a series of interviews. First up, a couple who found in her family tree inspiration to go to a new place to plant a new church.

Bryan and Marci Coble moved their family from Texas, where he was in seminary, to Chicago. After briefly considering planting a church in Portland, Oregon, the Cobles felt led to explore Marci’s home state. Her grandmother sent them a clipping from the Illinois Baptist saying more churches are needed in Chicago.

But there was another influence. Marci, who grew up in Chatham, is the granddaughter of former IBSA executive director Maurice Swinford (1988-1993). “He was like a second father to me,” she said at the meeting in Decatur. “He encouraged me and invested in my life. He planted those seeds of leadership in my life.”

New places

Answering the call to church planting led the couple to the Irving Park neighborhood of Chicago, a diverse community of Anglo, Hispanic, African American, and Asian people on the city’s north side. The location explains why Bryan wore a Chicago Cubs cap for 30 days during their exploration process. Could this diehard Cards fan from Missouri minister successfully in the heart of Cubs territory? During that month, Bryan felt a growing love for the city and its lost people.

Across Illinois, there are more than 200 places and people groups in need of an evangelical church. There are many places similar to the Cobles’ neighborhood. Many are in highly populated urban areas. Many are in small towns and rural crossroads. In all of them, gospel-teaching Baptist churches are needed.

The church planting challenge is for churches to pray for new congregations, partner with a church planter to assist his work, or to lead in the planting of a new congregation.
Talking about Jesus

Pat Pajak shares Christ everywhere—even in the hospital where he had open-heart surgery. Pat told his story to show the pioneering need to engage people with the gospel. “We need to believe that God can do a marvelous thing in our church,” Pajak said. “There are lost people all around us.”

Pajak described two emphases that will be part of his work as IBSA’s Associate Executive Director for evangelism in 2018. One of them is part of a larger project led by the North American Mission Board: Gospel Conversations. Talking about Jesus is the simple calling of every believer, but many are shy to speak up. NAMB’s goal is to register one-million gospel conversations prior to the Southern Baptist Convention meeting in June. NAMB has created a website where church members can report their personal conversations with lost people. There are also short videos from people sharing their “conversation” experiences. (GCChallenge.com)

new people

Pajak announced an IBSA project to baptize 1,000 people on April 8, 2018. “One GRAND Sunday” follows Easter, with the intent that witness training and gospel conversations will lead to baptisms. “We have 8 million-plus people in the state of Illinois who don’t know Jesus,” Pajak said.

This is an evangelism challenge. “We’re praying that 200 of our IBSA churches will baptize 12 people next year,” or more than the church’s previous three-year average. The hope is that churches will turn the decline in baptisms by setting evangelism goals and equipping members to share their faith, and by engaging lost people through evangelistic events and mission trips.

The commitment is for IBSA churches to become “frequently baptizing churches.”

Walking the walk
Lindsey Yoder charmed the crowd with her account of walking from Arthur, Illinois to Nashville, Tennessee: 300 miles in 27 days. The teenager first learned about human trafficking at an AWSOM weekend for teen girls, led by Illinois Baptist Women. Then, a movie on the subject convinced Lindsey that she must do something to help free young women, girls, and boys caught in the sex trade worldwide. Even in Illinois people are forced into sexual subservience. The most common route for bringing them into the state is along I-55 from St. Louis to Chicago.

Lindsey’s story is one of sacrifice.

A 14-year-old girl from central Illinois doesn’t often take on such a massive and awful cause. But this one did, one step at a time.

“It felt like I wanted to quit a lot. I refused to quit. I don’t like to quit. Sometimes putting one foot in front of the other is a lot harder than it sounds,” Lindsey said. And yet, she kept walking. On the journey she raised enough money to sponsor two “rescues” in a South Asian country.

Such sacrifice is what it takes to save people enslaved by sin.

Lindsay’s mother, Regina, who handled logistics for the trip and followed her all the way, said the support of their church was crucial. The people of Arthur Southern Baptist Church encouraged the teen and contributed to her cause, and by their example showed how Southern Baptists everywhere give for missions.

The Cooperative Program is Southern Baptists’ best channel for supporting life-saving missions. With regular, systematic, percentage giving from its offerings, each church makes the sacrifice each week. The need calls us to greater sacrifice.

New sacrifices

Here’s how Nate Adams described this missions-giving challenge. “We’re asking churches to make missions-giving a higher priority in your budget. We’re asking would your church be willing to make CP a greater percentage of your budget—if the Lord would lead you to make new sacrifices to give through CP.”

The Pioneering Spirit commitment is for 200 or more churches to increase CP giving (for example, 1% per year) with a goal of reaching at least 10% of undesignated offerings.

Follow the leader
Roger Marshall said in his first 10 years as pastor of FBC Effingham, he conducted 150 funerals. Raising up new leaders was not an option, it was imperative. So he began to pray. “God really does identify new leaders,” he said. “It’s not just about finding new slots. It’s really about finding God’s person.”

New leaders

Roger was on the platform with his brother, David, who recently retired as associate pastor at Mt. Zion, and their father, Frank, a 63-year veteran of ministry who is 94.
“Be the kind of leader someone ought to follow,” David said. “That’s what my father was.”
The senior Marshall’s advice for leader development: help people identify their spiritual gifts and put them to use. And “don’t blame someone else for what you are…. Live your responsibility.”

This is a leadership challenge. IBSA’s Mark Emerson urged pastors to commit to leadership development for current members and potential young leaders. The goal is for 200 or more churches to have intentional development processes in place.

During the Annual Meeting, 53 IBSA churches made one or more of these commitments.
As Illinois itself turns 200, it’s clear the work of Baptist pioneers, begun by Stilley and others, is as much needed today as when the state was founded.

WATCH IT
See the video about four early Baptist pioneers in Illinois. Two current pastors tell the stories of the first church planters, starting with New Design near the Mississippi River in 1796.

Plus, watch the videos about the ministry of the Cobles (“Heart for the City”) and Pat Pajak (“Sharing Christ Everywhere”).

TAKE THE CHALLENGE
Read more about the four Pioneering Spirit challenges and how IBSA can help your church with training, goal-setting, and ministry partnership. Register your church’s commitment online.

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