News Articles by Alan James

LUSAKA, Zambia (BP)--Collins no longer sleeps among the dead. He stands in a junkyard on the northwest side of Lusaka, Zambia, near the graveyard he used to call home ...

LUSAKA, Zambia (BP)--No one in the clinic's waiting room is smiling -- except Anna Banda.     She chats happily with people at the Circle of Hope clinic on the outskirts of Lusaka, Zambia. There are few -- if any -- empty seats as they wait to be tested and treated for AIDS.       One mother leaves the clinic carrying bottles of medication in one hand and an infant in her other arm. A trash can overflows with empty medication boxes people have discarded before leaving the facility.       Banda knows all too well the pain these people are feeling.       Nearly six years ago, Banda was dying of AIDS. She shows a photograph of herself during her darkest days. In the picture she is not smiling. She sits on a bed with her shoulders slumped, staring blankly into the camera. She appears frail, sad and near death.       At that stage of the disease, many people die within days or months -- maybe a year if they are lucky. According to UNAIDS (Joint United Nations Programme on HIV/AIDS) statistics, AIDS claims nearly 4,000 lives in sub-Saharan Africa every day.       As Banda's immune system began to shut down, she often felt weak, nauseated and unable to keep food down -- on the edge of becoming another AIDS statistic.       Then she began to take life-saving medication -- ART (antiretroviral therapy) -- and found encouragement at Circle of Hope clinic. A doctor put her on a strict regimen of medication each morning and evening.

RICHMOND, Va. (BP)--Her pain, grief and sadness from more than a decade ago lie just below the surface. Gloria Sloan remembers the spiritual darkness that enveloped her on that heartbreaking day.

GREENSBORO, N.C. (BP)–“Is anybody else coming?” Clyde Meador, interim president of the International Mission Board, posed the question to trustees during their Nov. 10 meeting in Greensboro, N.C. The IMB encounters this question more and more as it treks through an ailing economy and reduces its overseas missionary force through attrition from a high of […]

RICHMOND, Va. (BP)--Seeing some of the faces and names of 6,426 people groups unreached by the Gospel -- like the Warnang of Sudan -- gave college student Kaci Dills a sense of urgency to do something.       While attending a collegiate ministry event at LifeWay's Glorieta Conference Center in New Mexico, Dills and other students stopped at the International Mission Board's display booth bearing this year's Lottie Moon Christmas Offering theme, "Are we there yet?" There, students saw the "Getting There" challenge to reach the ends of the earth with the Gospel -- a large wall covered with tan stickers bearing the names of people groups that are fewer than 2 percent evangelical Christian. Those who visited the IMB booth were challenged to pick a sticker and start a journal via imb.org/gettingthere to pray for the unreached people group.       "God has burdened my heart," said Dill, a junior at Southeastern Oklahoma State University, who plucked the Warnang people group sticker from the display wall.       "Now I see them more as brothers and sisters, rather than strangers across the world," added Dill, a member of Western Meadows Baptist Church in Durant, Okla. "I hope to visit them someday."       Many of the people groups represented by at the IMB booth do not have access to Bibles. They have no churches. There are no missionaries working among them.       The "Are we there yet?" display helps students put their hands on something tangible to help them relate to the prayer need, said Suzanne Lillard, associate director of collegiate ministries for the Baptist General Convention of Oklahoma.       "This generation needs to feel like 'I'm doing something that's going to impact the world,'" Lillard said. "The more individually connected a student can get, the better it is for them."

RICHMOND, Va. (BP)–It was 12-year-old Zachary Rankin’s first overseas mission trip. Though he had spent five years in Thailand as a child of missionaries, he had never been to the jungles of Peru — and neither had his grandfather, Jerry Rankin, president of the International Mission Board. In 2008, the two traveled about five hours […]

RICHMOND, Va. (BP)--A few packed boxes line the back wall of Jerry Rankin's office at the International Mission Board (IMB) in preparation for his retirement as president on Aug. 1.

RICHMOND, Va. (BP)–Carrying a basket filled with more than 700 stickers bearing the names of unreached people groups, Clark Carter left the Southern Baptist Convention’s annual meeting ready to help take the message of Jesus Christ to the world. Carter, a campus pastor at Charleston Southern University, plans to challenge students this fall to learn […]

RICHMOND, Va. (BP)–The Quichua people of Ecuador have traveled all over the world, says one International Mission Board missionary, but few, if any, have gone for the sake of the Gospel — until now. Sam and Chelsea Cordell* recently left 10 years of mission work with the Quichua in Ecuador to start churches among slum […]

ORLANDO, Fla. (BP)–Across the vast expanse of the Orange County Convention Center hall in Orlando, Fla., people rose to their feet June 15 in a show of commitment to getting the Gospel to the 6,426 people groups around the globe still unreached with the Gospel. After 17 years as president of International Mission Board, Jerry […]