A group of Sage Avenue Baptist members took Faith Mountain, their Vacation Bible School (VBS), on the road to Kansas City, Kansas, before conducting it at their own church in Mobile. The 17-member group left Mobile June 3 and returned June 11.
“It was a family missions trip to share the gospel,” said Sage Avenue Pastor Jim Fisher. “One of the reasons was that it would be good for families to grow together in fellowship. Churches that have strong ties that way can do anything and endure anything,” Fisher said.
This trip marked the first time in about 10 years that a Sage Avenue missions team has gone out-of-state.
“Sage has a history of being a missions-minded church, but I think in some respects that has not been as strong in recent years as it has been in the past, so we’d like to resurrect that,” Fisher said.
The church provided vans and gasoline, and the members going provided their own lodging while traveling and meals, and Midwestern Baptist Theological Seminary at Kansas City, Mo., gave them free lodging during their stay.
They conducted VBS at First Baptist Church of Bethel, a community in which Bethel is the only Southern Baptist Church. Sage knew of Bethel through the pastor, Sam Aikens, who used to be a pastoral intern at Sage.
With few to no children active at the church and resources low, the only way Bethel could have had a VBS was for someone else to do it. Another church from the Baptist association in Kansas City held it for Bethel last summer. This summer Sage decided they could help.
“We thought there would be enough interest from the church here to go and help them,” Fisher said. “We knew we could give them the energy that they needed, and they took every last ounce of energy that we had.”
Five of the 17 going were children of some of the adults on the trip, and those children combined with Kansas children in the VBS for an attendance of about 36.
FBC Bethel had tried to promote the VBS, and once the Sage missions team arrived, they did extensive promotion, utilizing doorknockers and a lot of personal neighborhood contact.
Bethel Baptist housed the VBS, which was much like a VBS in the church-rich southern United States, but there were a few differences.
“We decided not to take up an offering, because we felt like most of the kids we would have would be unchurched, and we weren’t sure what kind of a signal that would send to them,” Fisher said. “We did not ask them to bring anything except themselves.”
The community they served was lower middle class and a very ethnically diverse population.
“I haven’t confirmed this, but I’ve been told that the Kansas City, Kan., area is one of the most [ethnically] diverse in the country,” Fisher said. “Kansas is just a very different area [from the South] in that there’s not a lot of evangelical work in that area.”
Kathy Edenfield, office manager at Sage, said, “I’ve always wanted to do this — something where you could tell about Jesus.
“There are all kinds of towns in America where people don’t hear it, so there are plenty of places we can go.”
Children there don’t know the strong biblical references that some children raised in the church do, according to Sage member Tracy Fisher.
“When we were talking about Abraham in the Bible story, one of the kids thought we were talking about Abraham Lincoln. We who have grown up in church and going to Sunday School and VBS hear these names and can associate a story with them, but those kids have never been taught,” she said.
“It was just neat to teach children who haven’t been taught, because in our own church we get so many kids that are here every Sunday, and they know the stories,” Emma Chapman, a member of Sage, said.
Diane Meddley enjoyed the family experience of the missions trip with her husband, Ray, and two of their children, Kari and Joseph.
“We were exhausted, but we were having such a good time together. … It was good to have family time together doing this,” she said.
Jeff Phillips, Sage associate pastor for music and students, is preparing to travel on another Sage-
initiated missions trip July 29–Aug. 13 to Uganda. Five Sage members plan to go on this trip, being joined by eight from other states.
The group will visit and do some construction and repair work at the Good Shepherd’s Fold Orphanage, (Global Outreach organization).
“A village on Mount Elgon contacted the orphanage and literally asked them to bring their God to them, so three of the first four days we will be there, we will have the privilege of taking the gospel to this village,” Phillips said.
Part of their time in Africa, they will be working with an International Mission Board missionary on an island in Lake Victoria.
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