Texas Baptists Committed Convocation, Houston, Texas, July 9–10, 2004

Local Churches on Mission
By Jeff Raines

Missions Review for Texas Baptists Committed

It is truly a great honor in my life to serve at First Baptist Amarillo—a great church with an incredible history and a long missions heritage. When I first came to the church and looked through the church history, I was struck by how the congregation, early on, had a real vision for reaching Amarillo. Many of the other strong churches in town were planted by First Baptist.

For years, we have had good and effective local ministries in Amarillo. About one mile from First Baptist’s facility is our mission church—the Buchanan Street Chapel. That building houses the Buchanan Street Chapel congregation along with a number of ministries. The Perkins Community Service center distributes food and clothing, helping about 500 people a month. A branch of the Christian Women’s Job Corp meets there, undertaking that crucial ministry of training and mentoring women for work and for life. A fairly unique ministry, the Agape Center, meets in the Buchanan Street fellowship hall during the week. It serves as a support service for mental health consumers and provides a place of retreat, fellowship, networking, and Bible study.

At our main campus we have some strong ministries with various ethnic groups. We have full-time pastors to the Laotian and Vietnamese communities. Some former missionaries have developed a thriving ministry to the refugee community in Amarillo. Each Sunday afternoon and Thursday morning, volunteers teach ESL to Iraqis, Iranians, Afghans, Kurds, Bosnians, and others from war-torn parts of our world. These lay-leaders recognized years ago that the world has come to us and have responded with the love of Christ. These are exciting local mission projects through our church that have gotten our people involved and reaching out.

As of a few years ago, though, we were not doing a whole lot outside Amarillo. People shared stories about mission trips past. In the 50s, 60s, and 70s, our church sent teams to Korea, Japan, Europe, Brazil, Hawaii, Alaska, and elsewhere. At some point, however, that activity slowed. Our High School students still worked each spring break at the border of Presidio, Texas, and Ojinaga, Mexico, but that was about it.

We certainly gave a lot of money to missions. In fact, one year Dr. Batson announced that the previous year, out of 44,000 Southern Baptist Churches, we were 10th in cooperative giving. After that service, a young parent came up to Dr. Batson and said, “Why are we giving all that money to missions when what we really need is another youth minister.” It was a comment that came as a shock to us.

As we reflected on that comment, we realized that the people who truly were missions minded in our church were our older adults. Our young adults were disconnected. Missions was not vital to them. Missions was something carried on by big institutions somewhere else. We took a hard look at our church and realized that we needed to be aggressive in engaging our younger people in hands-on missions if we wanted to continue being a missions-minded church.

After a scouting trip to Uganda, we established a three year partnership. Over the next three years we sent teams, the first leading a discipleship training conference. We set up in the central town of Apac, and about 300 people came to these sessions— some walking 2 days to make it. Adjacent to our teaching site, on a field of cut stubble, the Ugandan leaders set up tents for those who had walked from out-of-town. These were about the size we would use for a family of four, but they had ten to twelve people sleeping in each tent—no bottom on the tent—just sleeping on the stubble. They were attentive and engaged as we taught for a week, about six hours a day, on topics like the doctrine of God, the person of Christ, etc. It was an incredible time.

The next year we joined them in building a church in the central town. The dedication service for that building at the end of our time was the highlight. It was a five hour celebration, but it was so exciting that the time flew by. Following the service, their young people gathered at the front with their instruments and continued singing and worshipping. Later that evening, one of their pastors came by our hotel, and someone asked him how long they had kept up the singing. “Oh, they are still there. They’ll be there all night!” Our final year we traveled to three more remote areas of the association and camped out, spending a few days at each place leading discussions on topics like grace, the fruit of the spirit, and forgiveness.

I think setting a time limit was important. That allowed us to build significant relationships, but it also protected us from setting up a relationship of dependence. Our hope was to help that association clear some of their hurdles—some of their barriers— to effective ministry. Of course, attached to that hope was our goal of energizing new generations of our people for missions. I think we got a good start. The average age of First Baptist members who participated was 35.

Uganda was physically demanding, and, with all the travel time involved, required at least two weeks away. This automatically excluded many of our people. We moved to a new goal for our hands-on mission projects: to offer a variety of tasks in a variety of places to involve the maximum number of our people. We started by contacting the Texas Partnerships office at the BGCT, and they connected us with two churches: the Third Baptist Church of Guadalajara, Mexico; and First Baptist Church, Niteroi, Brazil.

One of the illusions we tend to carry in mission work is the idea that we are going to show them how to do things right. If I still held that view, it was obliterated by First Baptist Niteroi. After meeting with him, we attended their evening worship service— the 8th of the day—with a standing room only crowd of about 3,000 people. During the week we toured their various ministries in the community. They have day care centers, vocational training centers, vocational training in the prisons, and medical clinics that see 80,000 patient a year. They started a ministry giving fresh baked bread to street children to sell, so that they do not have to serve as drug couriers. The church runs a seminary and has more than 60 missionaries working around the world. Robby and I commented that they needed to be coming to help us! It’s inspiring to be working with them. Specifically, we have worked with their church plants in the area, leading Vacation Bible Schools and helping with outreach.

The Third Baptist church in Guadalajara is also very impressive. Their pastor, Dr. Omar Nicolas, is a medical doctor and is the administrator of the Baptist hospital there. The church has missions at its heart. Fifty percent of the church’s budget goes toward supporting their church plants—7 churches in a 200 mile radius of Guadalajara. Over New Years we traveled from Guadalajara, over the Sierra Madres mountains, to work with two of those church starts, helping them with construction projects, leading Vacation Bible School, and trying to encourage those pastors and churches in an area that is not very open to Baptist witness.

In the midst of these partnerships, we have taken other trips through both CBF and the IMB, to Baltimore, Los Angeles, and China. A group just returned from Uruguay, on an evangelistic trip with International Commission. Others are in Slovakia right now, using English-teaching as an avenue for outreach through the organization called English with a Purpose. In a few days our pastor will lead a group of thirty-five to St. Petersburg, Russia, to work in orphanages through Buckner Orphan Care International.

In addition to these trips we sponsor, about five years ago our missions committee introduced another program to encourage our students to participate in projects outside our church. They set up our Student Mission Fund, which pays up to one-half of the cost of qualifying mission projects for students. Right now we have students in two different countries in Southeast Asia, in a Muslim country in southern Europe, and in Panama.

As we have increased our participation, we set a goal for this year to have ten percent of our weekly Sunday attendance participating in hands-on missions. We will be close.

It has been an exciting time for our church, and these trips have greatly focused our church on missions. They play a powerful role in our missions education. While the missions presentation has sometimes gotten a bad reputation, we actually have increased attendance on our Sunday evenings when we give our reports.

To a large degree I think we have done well with that goal of providing maximum variety in opportunities to involve a greater number of people. We have seen real benefits in our people being awakened to what their discipleship means in Amarillo. Sometimes it takes going around the world to understand our calling at home.

Another great result is that we have a number of people in various stages of calling to full-time missions. Some are already on the field. Some are preparing to go. Some are just exploring. Only a few weeks ago I contacted WorldconneX for help in navigating a couple through their options in fulfilling their call to missions.

As I look ahead at where we are going with this, I feel a need for a subtle shift in our goals. With our mission partners I hope to move from a partnership model to a collaboration model. That word is used a lot, but I understand it as a deeply mutual, synergistic relationship. I hope that in the not too distant future we might be working with one of our partner churches in a third place, combining our skills and abilities to do what neither could do alone. I hope that in the next few years we can approach the missions task more strategically, seeking those tasks which provide the greatest impact, pushing the envelope of what a local church can do in missions.

My ultimate hope for First Baptist, Amarillo, and for all of our churches is that we would move beyond being a church with a missions program and even beyond being missions-minded. I hope that we would have missions at our core. I hope that we would be missional in every way, wherever we are, to the point that if someone were to examine the base code of our church’s DNA, that they would find there a desire and passion to be on mission with our God.

August 2004