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FROM THE STATES: Mo., Texas, N.M. evangelism/missions news; ‘Discipleship anywhere, everywhere, all the time’


Today’s From the States features items from:
The Pathway (Missouri)
Southern Baptist TEXAN
Baptist New Mexican

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Mo. church faithful
amid violence, crime

By Vicki Stamps

KANSAS CITY (The Pathway) — United Believers Community Church in Kansas City was planted in 1997. “We were planted on the worst street,” Darron Edwards, senior pastor, said, “surrounded by lots of violence and crime.”

Edwards reported that the church faced a history of adversity. “We stayed faithful to the Gospel,” he said, “and we were community oriented. Love for the community is still the fabric of our church.”

United Believers hosts a Back to School Blast. “We serve thousands of students from all over the area,” Edwards said. “We partner with the Kansas City Chiefs to supply students with school supplies.”

According to Edwards, the church grew the most from 2002-2007. “We grew from a small band of worshippers to more than 500. We are always involved in the community, make Jesus big, and we love people.”

Currently, United Believers is partnering with Prison Fellowship to plan a sports clinic. “We plan to work with about 200 kids who have a parent in the penal system. We will have members of Kansas City Chiefs, top student athletes and celebrities conduct the clinic sessions.”

A local school, Ingels Elementary, is happy that they are active in the community. The school awarded the church “Volunteer of the Year for Community Service.”

“Our church is less than five minutes from the school,” Edwards said. “Most of the students are underprivileged and we are working with the school to improve their lives.”

Edwards listed some of the projects that the church does for the school. “We do teacher appreciation lunches; we furnish school supplies; several of our men serve as hall monitors, as well as provide security for after-school programs,” he said.

Another partnership with the Kauffman Foundation works to improve the lives of students. “We wrote a grant to Kaufman for parenting classes to reach people and it was accepted,” Edwards said. “We are using the Word of God to present tips on raising children. The Foundation provides $25 gift cards to present to the parents who attend the classes.”

“What we are trying to do is transform,” he said. “We want to not be so broad,” Edwards continued, “we want to be narrow and focus on just a few programs.”

In addition to the focus on Ingels Elementary, United Believers works with Hospice House. “We provide dinner and spiritual assistance to the patients and the families,” Edwards said. “The house has 35 rooms of terminally ill patients and when loved ones come to visit, they are thinking about the patient and not what they are going to eat. We provide dinners and just stay out of the way. We want them to know love and we make Jesus big.”

The third focus of the church is discipleship. “We are doing intensive discipleship,” Edwards said. “We are not called to make numbers, but we are called to make disciples. Our goal is to make 100 men and 100 women disciples and have them disciple others. We are using the books, Kingdom Man and Kingdom Woman by Tony Evans, as our study. We have commissioned more than 50 people already.”

Edwards reports that people are being discipled at Starbucks, in classrooms, on Facebook Live and on conference calls.

“That’s our theme,” Edwards said, “Discipleship anywhere, everywhere, all the time.”
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This story appeared in The Pathway (mbcpathway.com), newsjournal of the Missouri Baptist Convention. Vicki Stamps is a contributing writer for The Pathway.

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One Texas church helps another
come home after Harvey

By Kay Adkins

WASKOM, Texas (Southern Baptist TEXAN) — Invite volunteers from your church to help a struggling congregation in Nome, and they might assume they were heading to Alaska. As it turned out, the members of First Baptist Church of Waskom discovered the town of Nome, Texas, one of the places hit hard by Hurricane Harvey last year.

Volunteers traveled nearly four hours south last March to begin rebuilding and renovating First Missionary Baptist Church of Nome, which had been severely damaged by flooding. Since August 2017, the Nome congregation had been meeting off site.

The Waskom missions team chair, Rose McLane, told the TEXAN, “It is our understanding that our efforts during the week of March 21 were just enough to bring this congregation back to their home church for Easter Sunday, and it was standing room only.”

Early this year the FBC Waskom missions team met to discuss opportunities to serve regionally, with a focus on Hurricane Harvey relief efforts. But by the time the missions team met to plan, many immediate needs had been resolved.

The hurricane, which rivaled Hurricane Katrina with an estimated $125 billion in damage, left much destruction that still needed attention.

So FBC Waskom reached out to the SBTC to explore the Adopt-A-Church program and how they could help.

Tony Wolfe, SBTC director of pastor/church relations, guided the Waskom missions team to consider adopting the Nome church. Other SBTC churches had helped with immediate needs last fall, including Inglewood Baptist in Grand Prairie and Faith Memorial Baptist in Jacksonville.

“None of us knew Texas had a city by the name of Nome,” McLane said.

They began to research, and Pastor Ivy Shelton reached out to John Coleman, pastor at Frist Missionary Baptist in Nome, to begin the conversation. Then the missions team met with Coleman on a conference call.

According to McClane, Coleman shared that his congregation had been meeting off site, and “they just needed some help to ‘come home.'” The team prayed and discussed the opportunity, then voted to adopt the Nome congregation.

Since their first trip in March, FBC Waskom has sent two additional weekend teams to speed the progress on the renovations.

One of the teams included 16 Waskom youth.

Jacob Speight, Waskom’s finance chairman, said, “These guys were supposed to have a Disciple Now weekend in Waskom where we live. When we went to them and asked if they would like to help this church out, they said ‘definitely.’ They gave up their D-Now weekend to go and help work on this church.”

The students painted, made sheetrock repairs, removed debris from damaged rooms and helped wire the stage for audio and video.

Thus far, Wascom volunteers from ages 5 to 60 have participated in the recovery work. The church now has use of a classroom, the fellowship hall, a finance office and fully functioning main bathrooms.

McClane estimated that after three or four more weekend trips the renovations should be complete.

“Pastor Coleman would like to hold a dedication service when we are done,” McClane said, “and we will make every effort to attend. We’ve met a few of the members of First Missionary Baptist and the smiles on their faces are ‘thank you’ enough.”

“Many thanks to the SBTC for giving us the opportunity to work alongside First Missionary Baptist of Nome and Pastor Coleman,” Shelton added. “It has been an incredible blessing to our people.”
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This article appeared in the Southern Baptist TEXAN (texanonline.net), newsjournal of the Southern Baptists of Texas Convention. Kay Adkins is a correspondent for the Southern Baptist TEXAN.

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N.M. children’s ministry
meets specific need

By Kevin Parker

PORTALES, N.M. (Baptist New Mexican) — The Children’s Department at Emmanuel Baptist Church in Portales, N.M., collected over 300 rolls of toilet paper for the Lighthouse Mission in Clovis. Fifteen children, accompanied by adult leaders, delivered the paper rolls, toured the mission’s facilities, and packed and served sack lunches.

Emmanuel Children’s Ministry Director Shirley Tapia contacted the mission roughly a month earlier to arrange the visit and asked what the mission needed. Geri Gomez, assistant to the mission’s executive director, told Tapia that they needed toilet paper.

Gomez told the Baptist New Mexican that the mission receives food, clothing and other items regularly, but toilet paper is a “forgotten item.” So, the mission purchases it. The donation, Gomez told the BNM, “encourages us and lightens our [financial] burden.”

She said the mission has a soup kitchen, three shelters, a clothing bank, and a men’s and women’s program. Because the mission does not charge for its services, they have a limited budget. Gomez said the donation would meet the mission’s needs for about two months.

Tapia said that the kids were excited about making the donation and visiting the mission. Some of the older children had been to the mission before, but for most of them the visit was their first. The group ranged from third grade to children about to enter seventh grade.

Tapia took time to prepare the children for the visit so they would know what to expect. While at the mission, the group learned about the mission’s history, visited the women’s program area, visited the mission’s Freedom Ranch that houses the men’s program, sorted shoes, hung up donated clothes, and prepared and served 48 sack lunches.

Both Tapia and Gomez described the children as respectful, interested, and engaged in all that happened. Tapia said, “They were eager to help.” “They were excited. When I spoke with them and told them the stories of the mission, … they actually engaged,” Gomez said.

About the activity, Tapia said, “What a great blessing to experience firsthand what it means to be the hands and feet of Jesus.”

Children’s mission camp motivated the visit. Tapia said, “I wanted them to be mission-minded already. We wanted to talk about those things before we went to camp.” She also said that the donation drive was a good way to connect the Children’s Ministry with the whole church congregation.

The children learned how bad choices can affect their lives, Tapia said. They heard the story of one woman in the woman’s program. Sometimes, they learned, bad choices lead to other bad choices and people end up in alcohol and drugs, according to Tapia.

Gomez hoped the children gained a new perspective of their community, specifically that some people around them live in poverty. “Taking children to something like this makes poverty a reality to them in their community,” Gomez reflected. “It brings it home that poverty is real.” Gomez also said that such experiences teach children “that they can make a difference.”

When asked why she chose and planned the visit to Lighthouse Mission, Tapia said, “I have a heart for missions.” Before becoming the church’s Children’s Ministry director, she led the church’s Families on a Mission ministry. When she made the change, she said she thought that she could work some of her missions and service ideas into the new ministry opportunity with children.

The church’s pastor, David Taylor, affirmed Tapia’s self-description. “Shirley has a huge heart for missions,” he said. Taylor said of the trip, “This is a great opportunity for our kids to serve and to know that some people have struggles.” Taylor had two children among those going to the mission.

Tapia has served as Children’s Ministry director for three years. She is also a Portales school counselor and volunteers as a counselor at Eastern New Mexico Pregnancy Resource Center. She teaches the first and second grade children at the church and leads a team of teachers and workers. Her team includes church members Lacy Taylor, Wednesday night teacher; Kathy Newman and Chelsea Hinricks, nursery teachers; Amanda Goins, preschool and kindergarten teacher; Patrick Kirchner and April Garcia, third and fourth grade teachers; and Anita and Fernia Tapia, teachers for fifth and sixth graders.

Emmanuel is one of eight Portales area churches affiliated with the Baptist Convention of New Mexico. The church’s worship attendance varies from 85 to approximately 100, based on the season. The church hosts a traditional Sunday school and worship each weekend. On Sunday nights, the church hosts a small group ministry. It uses Monday evenings to equip members for ministry.

Pastor Taylor said the church is “transitioning from a church that gives to missions to a church that does missions.” He said that activities like the children’s visit to Lighthouse Mission reflected that shift. The church also partners with other churches to provide international mission trip opportunities for its members.

Lighthouse Mission, Clovis, began in 1988 with a Bible study group that tried to put Jesus’ teaching in Matthew 25:35-36 into practice. It says, “… I was hungry and you gave me food, I was thirsty and you gave me drink, I was a stranger and you welcomed me, I was naked and you clothed me, I was sick and you visited me, I was in prison and you came to me.” According to the ministry’s website, the group began collecting clothing and food and distributing them to individuals and families who were in need.

Gomez encouraged other churches to visit, volunteer and donate to the mission. She said that churches from anywhere could collect and send simple toiletry items for people the mission helps. She said she was grateful for the donation, help, and visit from Emmanuel’s children.
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This article appeared in the Baptist New Mexican (bcnm.com/bnm), newsjournal of the Baptist Convention of New Mexico. Kevin Parker is editor of the Baptist New Mexican.

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EDITOR’S NOTE: From the States, published each Tuesday by Baptist Press, relays news and feature stories from state Baptist papers and other publications on initiatives by Baptist churches, associations and state conventions in evangelism, church planting and Great Commission outreach, including partnership missions. Reports about churches, associations and state conventions responding to the International Mission Board’s call to embrace the world’s unengaged, unreached people groups also are included in From the States, along with reports about church, associational and state convention initiatives in conjunction with the North American Mission Board’s call to Southern Baptist churches to broaden their efforts in starting new churches and satellite campuses. Except for minor style, security, formatting and grammatical changes, the items appear in Baptist Press as originally published.

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