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Archives For November 30, 1999

Missional impact in your state

Lisa Misner —  September 13, 2019

By Paul Chitwood

Paul-Chitwood-webMy first international mission trip took place on a farm in central Kentucky.

As a new pastor in the community, I often found myself interacting with migrant workers from Central and South America. I soon realized that most were spiritually lost.

From conversations with farmers, I learned many of them were as concerned as I was about the eternal state of the souls of these (mostly) men who were so far away from their homes and families.

As we began to pull together churches in our association and piece together a plan to begin a migrant ministry, we found an organization ready and eager to help us: our Baptist state convention. With the assistance of our state convention staff, we were soon seeing people from all over Mexico, Guatemala, Honduras and Nicaragua come to Christ — though we never left Kentucky.

Ministries in our 41 Southern Baptist state conventions vary from state to state, but their mission is the same: help churches reach their state and our world for Christ.

As we enter the fall of the year, most of our state conventions are promoting their annual state mission offering to support these vital ministries. My family will be giving to support the work in our state. As grateful and enthusiastic as I am for Southern Baptists’ support of international missions, I’m also thankful for and supportive of the ministry and mission work of our state conventions.

From my past experience as a pastor and state mission leader, I have seen firsthand the missional impact of state convention ministries. Where I served in Kentucky, more than 100 missionaries in the state receive varying levels of support for their work.

Ministries to refugees, migrants and ethnic minorities often are led or assisted by state convention team members and resources. State conventions help facilitate church planting, church strengthening and revitalization efforts as well as provide evangelism training and coordinate disaster relief ministry. In many states, collegiate work is led by the state convention and support is also provided for the ministry of local Baptist associations.

One of our adopted daughters was rescued and kept safe by our state convention’s orphan and foster care ministry before she came into our family. The lives of unborn children are being saved by crisis pregnancy centers that are often funded, in part, by the state convention. Several state conventions are actively involved in lobbying efforts for legislation to protect unborn children from the horror of abortion.

Many state conventions provide training and funding for prison ministries, through which inmates are hearing the Gospel, trusting Christ and being baptized by local churches. Women in the adult entertainment industry are being shown pathways to freedom and salvation, and churches are equipped for ministry to the homeless and those suffering addiction.

Across America, people are finding new life in Christ as churches work together through their state convention ministries. In addition to your church’s ongoing Cooperative Program support, your annual state mission offering is an opportunity for Great Commission and Great Commandment giving. Will you join my family and be a part of what God is doing through these ministries by giving through your state mission offering this year?

This week is the Week of Prayer for State Missions in Illinois. Learn more about MissionIllinois.org.

Paul Chitwood is president of Southern Baptists’ International Mission Board and a former executive director of the Kentucky Baptist Convention. Reprinted from Baptist Press.

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Day 6: Missions Mobilization – Week of Prayer for State Missions

Lisa Misner —  September 13, 2019

Day 6 Missions Mobilization

Mission trips are once-in-a-lifetime experiences, every time you go. IBSA’s Carmen Halsey trains volunteers to share Christ in new environments. And more than 20,000 Illinois Baptists serve each year.

Pray for IBSA’s mission mobilizers. Pray about your personal commitment to missions nearby and far away.

Learn more about the Mission Illinois Offering.

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Day 5: Student Ministry – Week of Prayer for State Missions

Lisa Misner —  September 12, 2019

Day 5 Next Gen

IBSA helps churches reach children, youth, and college students through VBS, missions events, Youth Encounter, and summer camps at Lake Sallateeska and Streator. Next-gen director Jack Lucas and the ministry teams train leaders for next-gen ministries. With 3-million children and teens in Illinois, this is a big responsibility. Watch the video, “Next Gen Ministries.”

Pray for stronger student ministry in all churches, and for IBSA missionaries who equip leaders.

Learn more about the Mission Illinois Offering.

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Day 3: New Churches – Week of Prayer for State Missions

Lisa Misner —  September 10, 2019

Day 3 Church Planting

Everyone Hears is a new initiative from IBSA to saturate the state of Illinois with the gospel of Jesus Christ, starting with concentrated efforts in places without a gospel witness. IBSA’s Eddie Pullen trains churches to start new congregations in target communities.

Pray for IBSA church planting catalysts working so everyone hears the gospel in Illinois.

Learn more about the Mission Illinois Offering.

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Day 2: Baptism – Week of Prayer for State Missions

Lisa Misner —  September 9, 2019

Day 2 Grand Calling

More than 700 people were baptized in IBSA churches in the month of April. “One GRAND Month” focused on baptism, which increased 7% last year. But we have a long way to go.

Pray for new believers. And pray for IBSA churches to reach unbelieving people with the gospel throughout the year.

Learn more about the Mission Illinois Offering.

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Day 1: Evangelism — Week of Prayer for State Missions

Lisa Misner —  September 8, 2019

Day 1 EvangelismWith at least 8-million lost people among Illinois’ 13-million residents, IBSA encourages churches to focus on evangelism. Pat Pajak trains hundreds of churches each year. He teaches NAMB’s “Who’s your one?” prayer focus and “Three Circles” witnessing tool. Watch the video, “Sharing Christ.”

Pray for the IBSA evangelism team and for evangelistic zeal in all churches.

Learn more about the Mission Illinois Offering.

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Mission Illinois: Hearts for tomorrow

Lisa Misner —  September 2, 2019

By Nate Adams

MIO Slider

I recently learned of the passing of Mary Lou Cameron at age 99. Mary Lou was the widow of Harold Cameron, who was state missions director and a church planting leader at IBSA for many years.

I didn’t know Mary Lou personally, but her passing reminded me of the only time I remember meeting her husband, Harold, probably in the late 1970’s. He came to speak in the St. Charles church where I was a youth minister, and shared passionately about the need for new churches in Illinois. In doing so, he told story after story of the challenges and opposition he and others faced in getting new Baptist churches established in northern Illinois, including ours.

At that time, our church had well over 200 weekly attenders, several vibrant ministries, and was baptizing new believers regularly. So it was hard for me as a 20-year-old youth minister to imagine a day just 25 years earlier, when our church didn’t exist.

During his one opportunity to do so, Harold convinced me that Illinois is a mission field, that church planting is the missionary task most needed here, that it is not easy, but that it is extremely worthwhile. His transparent heart cared not only for the lost, but for the lost of tomorrow. He knew that he couldn’t personally share Christ with all those lost people, but he could start churches that would. In that moment, I remember being personally grateful to him for starting our church.

Your giving supports vital church planting efforts across our state.

Now let me fast forward to today, when I am almost the age Harold was then, and when I ask you to join me in giving generously to the annual Mission Illinois Offering, preferably through your church, or at IBSA.org. Church planting is one of the primary ministries supported by that offering, and church planting is still desperately needed in Illinois. In fact, IBSA church planting staff have identified at least 200 places or people groups in Illinois where a new, Bible-believing church is needed, today.

With current leaders and resources, IBSA is seeing about 20 new churches started each year. But your generous offering can help accelerate the pace at which a New Testament church is established, in or near every community in Illinois.

Someone planted your church, and mine, whether it was 25 years ago or 200 years ago. The question for us today is how generously we will continue to pay our gratitude forward, and establish new churches for both new communities and new generations.

Reading Mary Lou’s obituary reminded me that Harold retired in 1981, just a couple of years after I met him as a young man. Men like my father and other church planting and associational leaders, and women like Mary Lou and my mom, then continued to champion that church planting legacy for their generation. In fact, they helped me plant a church in that same northern Illinois region in 1994, before I moved on to help church planting nationwide at the North American Mission Board. Now I stand on their shoulders, and without reservation ask us to continue planting new churches here in Illinois.

It probably won’t surprise you that Mary Lou Cameron designated any memorial contributions to either the scholarship fund of the Baptist Foundation, or to Illinois Baptist State Missions, or in other words, the Mission Illinois Offering. Mary Lou and Harold clearly had hearts for tomorrow, hearts for church planting, and hearts for tomorrow’s lost in Illinois. Our gifts through the Mission Illinois Offering this year can both honor their lives and echo their hearts.

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

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New initiative aims for gospel saturation in dry places

Lisa Misner —  August 26, 2019

By Eric Reed

Wide Shot of CrowdShawn and Paige Ruffino live in Sesser, a small town of about 2,000 people in far south Franklin County. Sesser is Paige’s hometown, and Shawn says he has come to love it as his own. That’s why he’s concerned for the spiritual future of the people who live there.

Likewise, the leaders of the church where the Ruffinos are members, Immanuel Baptist Church in nearby Benton, are continually growing in their concern for lost people in Benton and Sesser, and throughout their county. “We’ve been praying at Immanuel for many years for the 26,000 who are lost in our county,” Pastor Sammy Simmons said. “I desperately want everyone the hear the gospel.”

Simmons has led Immanuel Church to join a new IBSA initiative called Everyone Hears. In our state of nearly 13-million people, at least 8-million don’t know Jesus as their personal savior. In many places lostness seems especially great. And there are pockets of hope, where churches are focused on sharing the gospel with everyone who will listen. Everyone Hears aims to organize those efforts, with an evangelism cycle that begins with prayer, and moves through specific activities to demonstrate caring, sharing the gospel, baptizing new believers, and where there is an emerging core group, starting new churches.

Day 3 Church Planting“The purpose of Everyone Hears is that every man, woman, boy, and girl in a certain region can hear the gospel multiple times in ways they can understand,” said Eddie Pullen, IBSA’s church planting strategist who is leading the initiative. So far, 25 IBSA churches across the state are participating in Everyone Hears, targeting their own communities, or areas nearby.

Immanuel Baptist is seeking to reach their county, and Benton and Sesser in particular. At Easter, the church cancelled events at their campus and took worship services outdoors in both communities. About 200 people attended in Sesser, and at least 60 of them had no church affiliation.

The church has engaged in other activities, including praying for lost individuals by name on many occasions, giving away groceries, working to improve the park, hosting opening ceremonies for local ball teams. Bible distribution and a social media campaign are next steps on their outreach list.

“The idea of gospel saturation really hit my heart,” Simmons said. “It’s not just the idea that we want somebody to hear the gospel once and think that’s good enough. Surveys say sometimes it takes seven times where somebody hears the gospel before they make a decision for Christ. And so we want to saturate our area with the gospel such that you can’t miss it.”

Immanuel Church is engaged in international missions, spreading the gospel in Uganda through 12 trips in eight years. But, the pastor said, “we can’t ignore the reality that there are people who have never heard in our own backyard.”

Shawn Rufina

Shawn Rufina

Shawn Ruffino agrees. “We believe it can happen right here; gospel saturation can start right here.” That’s why Ruffino is leading outreach in Sesser. He chokes up as he says, “Jesus changes us, and he can save us, and he can use us no matter what we’ve been through.”

Or where we live.

Learn more about the Mission Illinois Offering and Week of Prayer.

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Give them the gospel

Lisa Misner —  August 19, 2019

A new ministry reignited this church’s passion

By Meredith Flynn

MIO Next Gen

Outside the white wooden First Baptist Church building, Atwood is quiet on Wednesday evening. A few parents stroll babies on the sidewalks, and a group of teen boys walks toward the school gym, basketball in hand. This community of just over 1,000 people is minutes from Illinois’ Amish country.

From the church parking lot, though, the thump, thump, thump of a bass line played over stereo speakers gets louder at the door. Inside the darkened auditorium, children and teens swing their arms and stomp their feet—matching the motions of a worship leader onstage.

This is Ignite, FBC Atwood’s year-old ministry for kids and students. On this Wednesday night, Pastor Lanny Faulkner will baptize 17 young people who came to Christ through Ignite or another of the church’s ministries for kids and teens. (The church baptized 15 people total last year.)

His church understands the statistics, Faulkner said. Most people that come to faith in Christ do so at a young age.

“If we’re going to change the world, we have to change Atwood,” said Faulkner, who has led the church since 2006. “If we’re going to change Atwood, we have to reach children and young families.”

Braving a new world
The generation coming of age now has experienced the world in a completely different way than the adults leading them at church, said Jimmy Hammond, an IBSA associate who facilitates student ministry around the state.

“For us, the challenge is learning how to see things from their perspective, so we can find meaningful ways to connect to them,” Hammond said. Throughout the year, IBSA sponsors camps and conferences for kids of all ages, and training opportunities specifically tailored for children’s and youth leaders.

Those events are possible because of the Mission Illinois Offering & Week of Prayer. Collected in September in churches across Illinois, the Offering helps provide missions and ministry that address critical needs in the state. MIO also supports IBSA personnel like Director of Next Generation Ministries Jack Lucas.

As IBSA and church leaders partner together to reach the next generation, they recognize the window is narrow. A 2004 Barna study found that 43% of Americans who profess faith in Jesus do so before they turn 13, and 64% before their 18th birthday.

The next generation presents a unique set of challenges and opportunities for church leaders. They see the problems in the world around them, Hammond said, but they’re not content to sit idly. They want to be involved; they want to make a difference. “But they’re just not sure how to do that.

“We know the answer to that: the gospel’s the way to make the biggest, most meaningful change in the world.”

In the world, and in Atwood. Every Wednesday at the beginning of Ignite, attenders read or recite a 30-second gospel summary. Ignite leaders say they’ve heard kids sharing the gospel summary at school. And Faulkner recently baptized an entire family that came to Christ after the children heard the gospel every week. The parents, sitting at the back of the auditorium, heard it too, and responded in faith.

Finding what works
For 25 years, FBC Atwood church hosted a successful Wednesday night children’s ministry that depended on many teachers. When the number of available teachers dwindled, the church had to get a new vision for the ministry. They tweaked the structure so that fewer teachers are required. The church saw an average of 120 young people every Wednesday during Ignite’s first year.

Some things are the same, though. Faulkner still rides the church bus on Wednesday nights as it picks up a dozen or more children from neighboring communities. The pastor serves as bus captain (or monitor); the driver is a deputy sheriff who has been transporting kids to and from the church for 25 years. His wife, who recently passed away, started the original kids’ ministry in Atwood. Together, Faulkner said, the couple is responsible for hundreds of kids coming to know Christ.

On Wednesday nights in Atwood, the message is also the same as it always has been.

“The gospel is the power of God unto salvation,” Faulkner says. “It’s not preaching ability, teaching ability, how exciting the music is. The thing that brings people under conviction, the things that bring them to repentance and faith, is the gospel.”

Learn more about the Mission Illinois Offering.

– Meredith Flynn

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Why Illinois matters

Lisa Misner —  August 16, 2019

By IBSA Media

Everyday headlines affirm church influence urgently needed—especially here

Illinois townsSeveral recent news stories have left us surprised, even stunned. The report that, at the stroke of the governor’s pen, LGBT history will be part of the Illinois public school curriculum starting next year leaves some Christian parents wondering how to handle the controversial subject at home, and other parents contemplating alternate education options.

In an opinion column for USA Today, Jay Keck told how his daughter, who later proved to be autistic, was affirmed by the school system in her sudden desire to identify as male, despite the objections of her parents who were trying to get help. The principal of the Chicago-area school even presented her diploma under her assumed male name at her graduation, again ignoring her parents’ request.

And this story hasn’t made the news yet, but it will probably show up on Facebook. In one quaint Illinois burg, a featured children’s book at the public library is about two worms who want to get married, but they can’t decide which of them will wear the bridal gown. Earthworms are hermaphrodites, which seems by the author’s implication to justify some gender-crossing behaviors in humans. It’s a celebration of love “in all its forms,” the book jacket says—for preschoolers.

The stories that alarm us and dismay us are not only about sexuality and gender and identity. They’re also about the multiplicity of gambling parlors for throwing away one’s pension check, abortions through all nine months of pregnancy, and readily available pot in violation of federal law. The moral decline of Illinois has happened so quickly, and most of it at the hand of the government. Abraham Lincoln wouldn’t recognize this state. Would he even claim it as his own?

When we look across Illinois today, we see issues that once troubled cities are prevalent everywhere. From the smallest farming community with a school house or a bar, to the toughest neighborhoods in the largest cities, to the marble hallways of our Capitol and courts—the moral rudder is broken. And in those places the work of Illinois Baptist churches is needed like never before.

Usually in this space we would publish a feature article based on one of the
Mission Illinois videos. Three of these stories were told in the special section in the July 29 issue of the Illinois Baptist, and they’re available online. These churches are taking on the responsibility to bring gospel light to dark places. But what we need to say this year is, like those churches, won’t you focus on our state mission field in a greater way?

Because of sacrificial giving by Baptists in Illinois each September, IBSA is able to help churches grow stronger in evangelism, leadership, and ministry impact. And IBSA helps start a dozen or more churches every year in places where there is little gospel witness. About 420 churches give about $350,000 each year. And IBSA is grateful for the partnership that supports camps and campus and next-gen ministry, church planting and leader development, and more.

But some potential impact of our work is lost, because fewer than half of IBSA churches support the Mission Illinois Offering and Week of Prayer. This annual offering is just as vital to ministry in Illinois as the seasonal offerings for Lottie and Annie are to other SBC missions. And frankly, mission work in Illinois calls for sacrifice on our part.

If your church supports Mission Illinois with giving and prayer, thank you.

If it has been a while since your church had a focus on state missions, please consider the growing need for biblical truth in Illinois. Think about the role stronger churches and more churches would serve in establishing a beachhead against moral decline. A gift to the Mission Illinois Offering is one way to fortify Baptist presence and values in Illinois.

And if you will, please join the Week of Prayer. Illinois needs relentless intercessors right now.

Learn more about the Week of Prayer for the Mission Illinois Offering September 8-15.

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