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  • November 30, 1999

Archives For November 30, 1999

Offering Day

ib2newseditor —  September 18, 2016

Mission Illinois Offering  Week of Prayer Day 8

MIO-box-smallToday many churches across the state will collect the Mission Illinois Offering. With a goal of $475,000, the ministries in this prayer guide depend on faithful giving in order to continue reaching people for Christ. The Mission Illinois Offering is the most direct channel through which Illinois Baptists can fund mission work close to home and really invest in the things important to us here.

Mission Illinois encourages the work of local congregations, is built on solid Baptist doctrine, and helps share Christ in every setting where IBSA missionaries serve. Missions giving through this offering helps equip and mobilize people to reach our specific mission field—the lost and unreached people in Illinois.

Pray for IBSA Executive Director Nate Adams and all the missionaries and staff of IBSA. Pray for generous giving during your own church’s offering for state missions.

Learn more about the Mission Illinois Offering

Watch Nate Adams’ video, “Turn on the light.”

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Reaching unreached people in Illinois

ib2newseditor —  September 16, 2016

Mission Illinois Offering Week of Prayer Day 6

MIO-box-small75% of Illinois’ 13 million people don’t know Jesus Christ. Almost 2 million residents are from outside the U.S. and many more have not understood their need for salvation. In Chicagoland, for example, “every block is a different world, every community is a different community with different races, different beliefs,” said Kenyatta Smith, planter and pastor of Another Chance church in Chicago’s Inglewood neighborhood.

In an area filled with killing and violence, Smith is dedicated to bringing the hope of God back into this community and offering people “another chance” just like he got, through a saving relationship with Jesus Christ. And he’s planting a second congregation in nearby—but very different — Evergreen Park.

Learn more about the Mission Illinois Offering

Pray for spiritual awakening in Illinois, and the unreached people who live in our state.

Watch Kenyatta Smith’s story, “Reaching unreached people in Illinois.”

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IBSA conferences and camps

ib2newseditor —  September 15, 2016

Mission Illinois Offering Day 5

MIO-box-smallHundreds of children, teens, and church leaders visit IBSA’s camps at Streator and Lake Sallateeska. Whether for a quiet spiritual retreat, or a fun week filled with games and summertime activities, these sites are home to many fond memories. And many young people have come to know Christ and have committed to ministry. The missions camps challenge students to think about mission work locally and worldwide. And worship and leadership conferences held at Christian colleges train teens to be leaders in their own churches.

“People who might not be as receptive in another setting are open to hearing the gospel” in a camp or retreat setting, Mike Young said of the Streator camp.

Pray for expansion of our camp facilities and programs, Steve Hamrick who leads student music conferences, camp directors Philip Hall and Mike Young, and the staff and volunteer leaders of Super Summer and other life-changing experiences.

Watch this slideshow of students enjoying their camping experience at Streator and Lake Sallateeska Baptist Camps.

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Students on mission in Chicago

ib2newseditor —  September 14, 2016

Mission Illinois Offering Devotion Day 4

MIO-box-smallLily Ohl grew up thinking Chicago is a scary place. But the 17-year-old from Sherman found during ChicaGO Week that many people were open to hearing the Gospel. Each summer, teens travel to the city and assist church planters in reaching their communities. They learn firsthand how new churches are started and get practice sharing Christ. “It’s a big city, but people are willing to listen and you can really change a life,” said Ohl.

Showing students the value of planting new churches is just one way IBSA is leading efforts to reach America’s third largest city, where less than 10% of people are affiliated with an evangelical church.

Pray for the salvation of Chicago, and IBSA’s Chicagoland church planting team: Tim Bailey, Dennis Conner, Jorge Melendez, and John Yi.

Learn more about the Mission Illinois Offering at missionillinois.org.

Watch Lily Ohl’s story, “Students on mission in Chicago.”

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Mobilizing volunteers worldwide

ib2newseditor —  September 13, 2016

Mission Illinois Offering Devotion Day 3

MIO-box-smallThis spring seven Illinois women set aside their daily responsibilities for a week and said “yes” to a call to South Asia. There they worked with Muslim women. Team member Lindsay McDonald said it was a very dark and oppressed place, “but I think in the darkness, we were also allowed to see hope.” Even in a place of persecution, women raised their hands wanting to become followers of Christ.

“We went expecting to see certain things and then God delivers the unexpected!” said Carmen Halsey.

IBSA aids churches in sending more than 22,000 people each year to serve on mission teams, in their communities and around the world.

Pray for IBSA’s Carmen Halsey and Dwayne Doyle and the teams they help train. And pray for your church’s involvement in missions.

Learn more about the Mission Illinois Offering

Watch Lindsay McDonald’s story, “Mobilizing volunteers worldwide.”

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Investing in churches

ib2newseditor —  September 5, 2016

MIO-box-smallNow is the time of year when most Illinois Baptist churches are preparing to promote and receive the annual “Mission Illinois Offering,” which is devoted to advancing the gospel among more than eight million lost people, right here in our state.

Most of the time when we describe our mission priorities here in Illinois, we talk about the desperate need for new churches, especially in northern Illinois, and in large, lost cities like Chicago. And indeed, the MIO is helping start about 25 new churches every year.

And many times we talk about the vast and strategic mission field of Illinois college campuses, where thousands and thousands of tomorrow’s American and international leaders are being trained, often with little or no exposure to the gospel. The MIO supports collegiate ministries too, on more than two dozen campuses.

MIO supports our greatest missionary asset: the local church.

Your gift through the Mission Illinois Offering also helps support the Christian Activity Center in East St. Louis, and human need ministries like disaster and hunger relief, and IBSA-coordinated mission trips from Illinois to the ends of the earth.

But I received a promotional e-mail the other day that reminded me we often don’t talk enough about one of the most important ministries that the MIO makes possible—the ongoing investment of our missionaries and staff in the health and evangelistic growth of IBSA churches. Local churches are our greatest missionary asset as Illinois Baptists, and our investment in their health, growth, and leaders is as important as planting new churches, reaching college campuses, or meeting human and spiritual needs.

Watch the video, “Turn on the Light,” to learn more about why Nate Adams supports the Mission Illinois Offering.

The e-mail was from a church consulting firm. It offered training over a 3-day period on topics like church health models, conflict resolution, overcoming barriers to church growth, and individual church leader development. I thought to myself, ‘That’s what our staff does all the time!”

IBSA carefully measures our staff’s time investment in training and consulting with local churches. Consistently we have had direct consultation with 750-800 churches each year. Considering that ministry is delivered primarily by about 20 traveling staff, that means each staff member is serving an average of 40 churches, all year long!

But what really caught my attention about the church consulting firm’s letter was the cost of its 3-day training—$950 per student, with a minimum of 15 students. That would be over $14,000 for three days of help. To do that for 800 churches would cost more than $11 million. Our Mission Illinois Offering goal this year is $475,000.

I realize that’s not a precise apples-to-apples comparison, since Cooperative Program giving also funds our state mission work, and since IBSA does far more than training and consulting. But I hope it makes the point for you that it made for me. Every IBSA church has a staff of church health and growth consultants at its disposal, and their help is valuable! Your church’s gifts through the MIO and CP enable that staff to be available for your and hundreds of other IBSA churches—week in and week out.

Sometimes it’s awkward to ask for financial support. And maybe it’s a little easier to ask churches to support church planting and missions than to point to the “return on investment” that churches also receive through training and consulting. But if you stop and think about the value of what your church both receives and provides for other churches through your state missions giving, I hope it will make you want to give a truly generous gift through the Mission Illinois Offering this year.

Learn more about the Mission Illinois Offering and Week of Prayer September 11-18 at MissionIllinois.org.

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

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My spiritual blind spot

ib2newseditor —  August 29, 2016

Reaching the unreached in Illinois

unreached

I’ve lived in Illinois my entire life. I was born and raised in the capitol and attended college at ISU (Illinois State University). I’ve visited family each year in southern Illinois and taken countless road trips to Chicago and the northern suburbs. I’ve also been an Illinois Baptist my entire life.

MIO-box-smallHaving grown up here and very involved in the church, I know well the Baptist beliefs, as well as the spiritual state of this mission field we call home. What I didn’t know, though, is that there are 83 unreached people groups right here in the U.S… and almost 10 in our own backyard!

One (or both) of two barriers typically define what qualifies as an unreached people group: understanding and acceptance.

The issue of understanding largely comes down to language. And where many may think this is only a problem in third world countries and isolated jungles, you may be surprised to learn as I was that in Illinois, we have 9 official unreached people groups that fall into this category. Then there are many more who fall into the latter—those who are unengaged and simply refuse to accept the truth of the Bible.

Watch “Reaching the Unreached” to learn more about the unreached people groups in Illinois.

Combined, the total adds up to more than 8 million here who are lost.

And I’m sure it comes as no surprise to anyone that many of these unreached, unengaged people reside in the greater Chicagoland area—a region where approximately 70% of our state’s population lives. It’s not only the biggest, most diverse region in Illinois, but one of the nation’s largest cultural melting pots. Which is why the work of church planters there is as crucial as ever.

In this one city are millions of people from all walks of life and backgrounds. Isolated neighborhoods that look and function as if you were in a completely different country. Unreached people groups hiding among the throngs.

The potential reach of the gospel in Chicago is astounding. But the message of Jesus Christ is only going to go forth there as long as there are generous, prayerful people and willing church planters willing to support this Great Commission endeavor. To bridge the gap and meet these lost and searching individuals where they are, we must pray, give, and go.

Read the Sept. 12 edition of the Illinois Baptist to learn more about one Chicago church planter, Kenyatta Smith, and his mission to reach unbelievers and give people another chance in Christ.

My eyes have been opened to the unreached. What’s in your spiritual blind spot?

Learn more about the Mission Illinois Offering and Week of Prayer September 11-18.

– Morgan Jackson is an editorial contributor for IBSA and freelance writer living in Bloomington, IL.

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A walking, talking brochure

ib2newseditor —  August 22, 2016
South_Asia

An mission team member teaches girls at a missions center in South Asia last March.

The best kind of advertising is free advertising, I’m pretty sure I heard in my college “Introduction to Public Relations” class. When it comes to missions, I think my professor knew what he was talking about.

Have you ever talked to someone who just got back from a mission trip? It’s like the old joke (that has been given new life with modern phenomena like veganism and CrossFit):

How do you know someone just got back from a mission trip (or is a vegan, or does CrossFit)?

MIO-box-smallDon’t worry, they’ll tell you about it.

And isn’t that a good thing? To share missions stories and try to help the people who weren’t there understand why you felt compelled to go—and probably go back? Even better, talking about a mission trip gives you an opportunity to challenge them to go.

Mark Emerson recently described a mission volunteer as a “living brochure.” The woman he was talking about, Lindsay McDonald, is a pastor’s wife from Casey, Ill., who went to South Asia in March with a small team from Illinois. The group shared the gospel in villages  where more than 90% of the population is Muslim.

Watch the Mission Illinois Offering video, Mobilizing Volunteers Worldwide, to learn more about Lindsay McDonald’s South Asia trip

They also visited community centers where women are learning job skills and Bible stories.

When the team got back to Illinois, they started telling their stories. The group is contagious, Emerson said, but in the best possible way. And people are catching what they have.

When the team got back to Illinois, they started telling their stories. The group is contagious, but in the best possible way.

I went to Haiti with an IBSA GO Team in 2013. When I got back to Illinois, it was all I talked about for a few weeks. My husband was on the team too, so we talked about it at home. I wrote about it in the Illinois Baptist. We shared with our community group and local church about the trip.

Haiti was constantly on our lips and on our hearts.

Before you get too impressed, I should confess that a weekend spent binge-watching Downton Abbey has had the same effect on me. Without meaning to, I start using the cadence and accent of early 1900s Britain. That’s what an immersive experience does: We adopt the passion and language of the experience that has captivated us.

We become living brochures. And in the best cases, what we’re advertising is the call to sacrifice time, money, energy, comfort, even safety, for the sake of taking the gospel to a place and a people deeply in need of it.

Free advertising, for a really great product.

Learn more about the Mission Illinois Offering and Week of Prayer September 11-18.

– Meredith Flynn is an editorial contributor to the Illinois Baptist

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Students find joy in serving

ib2newseditor —  August 15, 2016

ChicaGO Week mobilizes youth to missions—and inspires me deeply.

Chicago Week Group

Photo op | Part of the group from First Baptist Church O’Fallon poses for a picture before starting the daily commute back to Judson University.

Two summers in a row now I have been completely immersed in the world of the Mission Illinois Offering – helping provide churches with state missions Bible studies, crafting guides for Illinois Baptists to prayerfully walk through with one another, and working to prepare hearts for giving and supporting missions right here in our own state.

MIO-box-smallThere is one area, though, which Mission Illinois giving supports that has become especially near and dear to me: ChicaGO Week.

I have had the opportunity to cover a number of incredible stories about work that IBSA churches are doing across the state – a small, rural congregation feeding thousands of people each month, urban church planters gathering together for mutual encouragement and solidarity, children whose Christlike actions have touched the lives of adults and entire communities.

Watch the MIO video, “Students on Mission in Chicago.”

But when I reflect on which stories have had the most impact on me personally – which testimonies and experiences have managed to stand out above all the rest – hands down they revolve around the selflessness and joy I’ve had the privilege to witness during ChicaGO Week.

As you can read about more in the upcoming August 22 edition of the Illinois Baptist, ChicaGO Week offers youth a unique opportunity to travel to this huge mission field and partner with local church planters whose goal is to reach the 9 million Chicagoland residents with the gospel, a large majority of whom don’t have a relationship with Jesus.

And trust me when I tell you that these students don’t take this partnership lightly.

Chicago Week Bubbles

Sports Camp | Local kids came to Transformation Church each day during ChicaGO Week as IBSA youth partnered with them to put on a sports camp — complete with bubbles and chalk drawing galore.

Last summer I watched as kids braved the summer heat and accomplished more yard work in a few hours than that church planter and his family could have gotten done all week. I thanked God for a young group of girls as they bravely talked to strangers and told others about Christ in this huge city they’d never even been to before. And this summer I couldn’t help but be filled with joy as 30+ students poured their time and energy into simply playing games with kids in the local community – eating ice cream together and showing them the love of Jesus.

Letting them know that they matter.

And the planters. The students during ChicaGO Week only get a brief glimpse into the daily lives of these church planters – seeing just a peek into the challenging, sometimes grueling and heartbreaking, yet oh so rewarding world of starting a new congregation. But getting to speak to these men and their families gives youth the opportunity to see the need for the gospel in our state, and it has given me such a greater appreciation for where my MIO dollar is going.

So I encourage you to give to the Mission Illinois Offering, and give generously. Because I’ve seen firsthand the life change and the souls that are won for the Lord when these planters have the resources they need to fulfill the mission that has been placed on their hearts.

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

– Morgan Jackson is an editorial contributor for IBSA and freelance writer living in Bloomington, IL.

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The stories will convince you

ib2newseditor —  August 1, 2016

Focus on state missions starts September 11

Wrap cover artOver the course of almost five years, I have traveled to the far corners of Illinois looking for stories. Mostly they’re stories to support the Mission Illinois Offering & Week of Prayer, stories of God’s people whose work is made possible by the missions commitment of Baptists in our state. My partner in this venture, videographer Paul Wynn, and I joke that we’ve spent the last five Mother’s Days together. His kids are grown now, so his wife doesn’t mind if he’s away from home on her holiday. Maybe having a quiet house is what makes it a holiday for her.

On those May weekends and many others, we have visited new churches and compassion ministries. We’ve been from Elgin to East St. Louis, Davis Junction to Iuka, Plainfield to Metropolis, and many points in between. We’ve talked with pastors and joyful believers they’ve led to Christ. We’ve followed teenagers who braved city streets, sharing the gospel with strangers for the first time. And we’ve heard story after story from IBSA missionaries whose life-changing work brings them—and sometimes all of us—to tears.

I suppose the numbers should be compelling enough: There are 13 million people in Illinois, and at least 8 million of them do not have a faith relationship with Jesus Christ. I lived in Chicagoland 15 years, and there the “numbers” are ever before you. So many people. So few believers. I learned what it means to be in the minority, because Christians are so far outnumbered.

The biblical command should be convicting: Jesus said, “Go.” Isn’t that enough?

But what is most convincing is the stories. The stories and the people who share them convince me afresh every year that our mission work in Illinois is vitally important, worth our personal service and our prayer and our giving and our going.

Calling all churches

Hart Family

Hart Family, church planters in Breese, IL

I admit I felt out of place at a bar in Breese, Illinois, but it was Sunday morning and technically the bar wasn’t open. They were having church, and I knew the songs. I’m still smiling about how the young church planter and his wife started a church—in a bar—in his hometown—which, as most hometowns do, knew too much about him. I celebrated when he sent word a couple of weeks later that the church baptized its first new believers in a horse trough.

Their story is featured in our collection for the 2016 Mission Illinois Offering & Week of Prayer.
• Plus, there’s the story of a pastor’s wife we met in Casey soon after her international mission trip to aid oppressed women in South Asia.
• And the student group making its second trip from Sherman to the big city streets during ChicaGO Week.
• And the pastor planting another church nearby his downtrodden neighborhood, hoping to reach unreached people with another chance at hope in Christ.

These stories will all be featured in the Illinois Baptist. And they are included in the Mission Illinois Offering prayer guide for September 11-18, which will be distributed in participating churches. A week of devotions also is included in the special supplement that wrapped this edition of the newspaper. And all the materials are on our new website: missionillinois.org.

Our statewide goal this year is $475,000. The offering supports IBSA’s missions work, including the areas we’re highlighting this year: church planting in rural Illinois, students reaching Chicago, mobilizing Illinois volunteers for missions worldwide, and sharing Christ with unreached people. Yes, there are people in Illinois who have never heard.

Please encourage your church to participate in the Mission Illinois Offering & Week of Prayer. And please pray about your own gift for state missions. If you’re like me, the stories will convince you.

See all videos and mission study materials at missionillinois.org. Contact MIO@IBSA.org if we can help your church observe the Week of Prayer for state missions.

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