Pickens County makes missions a tradition

Pickens County comes up on you like a clump of goldenrod on the roadside, so quickly you almost miss it. The neon lights and barbecue joints lie miles behind, back in Tuscaloosa and Birmingham.
   
Just up ahead, past small towns like Gordo and Elwood, past lanky loblolly pines and sloughs populated by turtles and cypress knees, is the sign for Carrollton, population 1,151, the Pickens County seat.
   
Stop one of the folks at the courthouse or on the street, and there’s a good chance you’ll meet someone who went to church with an International Mission Board (IMB) missionary.
   
Pickens County has had someone serving overseas in missions consistently since 1851. And 149 years and 16 IMB missionaries later, the missions call is still heard — and heeded — by churchgoers who call Pickens County home.
   
Pickens County has a heritage of faith as thick as the morning mist over the Tombigbee Waterway a  few miles down. All together, the association has 31 Southern Baptist churches, with membership totals ranging from 24 to 527.
   
But their faith doesn’t stop at home. Starting with Pickens (then called Grants Creek) Baptist Church member Martha Foster Crawford and her husband, T.P., who were appointed as missionaries to China in 1851, church members all across the association have prayed, given and gone for the cause of global missions.
  
What is the secret that keeps missions alive in Pickens County?
   
In an age when the megachurch is king and missions budgets may be whittled down to make room for building funds, this quiet spot has an uncanny grasp on the missions message.
   
From feeding and clothing the county’s needy through the Baptist Center Thrift Store to jail ministries and funding short-term missions projects overseas and around the United States, churches across the county “gee and haw together” for the cause, said Gary Farley, director of missions in Pickens County. “We just believe in coming together around missions.”
   
One look around Carrollton will prove it’s not the bricks or offerings that build these churches; it’s the faithful prayers and preserved memories of missions heroes.
   
On occasions like Carrollton Baptist Church’s Missions Festival, friends and relatives of Addie Cox, a single missionary to China from 1918 to 1955 and a Pickens County native, gather to remember her life and legacy.
   
“Miss Addie lived a very simple sort of life,” said one church member. “I remember when she took the neighborhood boys to visit the jail for the first time, and there she was, a fearless, short, stocky woman dressed in black clothes. She was surrounded by black and white prisoners, and the guards weren’t even in the room. Those men listened as she told them that God loved them.”
   
Born in 1885, Cox gave her life to Christ and joined Carrollton Baptist Church at age 9. Because of her passion for sharing her faith both at home and abroad, she made a profound impact on scores of people.
   
“There are probably hundreds of people who have developed a heart for missions because of Addie Cox,” Farley said.
   
With that heritage, is it coincidence that Suzanne Smith, a nurse and member of Carrollton Baptist, plans to use her nursing abilities in full-time missions?
   
At nearby Mount Pleasant Baptist Church, a nephew remembers James Ulman Moss, who with his wife, Ruth, and six children served as a missionary in Latin America from 1945 to 1982. Moss spent his boyhood years in Mount Pleasant’s pews.
   
“We’re proud we had a missionary come from our church,” said Herschel Owen, pastor at Mount Pleasant. “It just goes to show you that you don’t have to be from a big church or a rich family to be a missionary.”
   
Is it a coincidence that church member Jennifer Latham, an elementary education major at Judson College, served in 1999 as a summer missionary to Singapore? Not likely, say folks in Pickens County.
   
Small towns, big hearts — depending on who is asked, the reasons for Pickens County’s consistency in missions may vary. But the goal remains the same.
   
Ask Farley, and he’ll suggest a close-knit small town environment helps keep people down to earth and missions stories fresh.
   
“Jesus spent most of His time in rural areas. He wanted to plant the gospel in a place where folks knew folks,” Farley said.
   
In a small town, there are generations of people who remember.
   
Nell Jones, associational director for the Woman’s Missionary Union in Pickens County for 10 years, remembers Mary Swedenburg — missionary to Japan since 1969 — as a child with her pastor father.
   
When Swedenburg’s father would come to Pickens County to preach, Jones’ family would invite them over and “load them up with vegetables and pork” as a love gift. Those visits made an indelible impression on her.
   
“I think (missions is) just part of our lives,” Jones said. “We’re missions-minded like that. We’ve always tried to live the Great Commission.”