Reggie Quimby has lost count of how many times he’s been to Venezuela in the nearly six years Alabama Baptists have partnered with the Baptists of that nation.
Quimby, director of the office of global partnerships/volunteers in missions for the Alabama Baptist State Board of Missions (SBOM), figures the number of times he’s hopped the Gulf in a plane bound for the South American nation totals somewhere around 24. But numbers aren’t that important to him.
What’s important is each life that’s been changed for the glory of Christ through the influence of Alabama Baptists. And though he’s not necessarily a numbers person, Quimby has to admit that the figures are amazing — more than 25,000 decisions have been made for Christ in Venezuela through Alabama Baptists’ efforts since 2000.
It’s six years’ worth of evangelism that’s come in the form of medical missions, construction, financial planning and computer-service ministry teams, to name a few. And it’s evangelism followed closely by the discipleship efforts of local churches.
Some 30 to 40 projects per year have drawn teams of Alabamians since the partnership between Alabama Baptists and Venezuelan Baptists began at the beginning of 2000. Even now as the partnership begins to wind down, Alabama Baptists are still garnering thousands of frequent-flyer miles between the state and its South American counterpart.
“Because it is the last year and there were several places we had not reached yet, we put out pleas through The Alabama Baptist and through the mail in an attempt to reach the locations that were on the radar screen with projects still needing to be done,” Quimby said.
As a result of state Baptists’ response, groups such as the 12-person team Quimby took to Barcelona, Venezuela, July 2–10 or the 34-person team he took to Valera, Venezuela, July 16–23 are still seeing scores of people come to know Christ.
During the latter evangelistic project alone, the team — split into groups of two, three or four — led 649 Venezuelans to make professions of faith, all of whom had local churches set and ready to follow up with discipleship.
Receptive to gospel
“The Venezuelan Baptists are an inspiration in the way that they evangelize and follow up on new converts,” said David Patty, director of missions for Sand Mountain Baptist Association, who was on the most recent team. “The church my partner and I were working with only has around 25 people who come, but they have already started six mission churches from that 25.”
Patty said the Venezuelans were “very receptive to the gospel message.”
“They wanted to hear why we’d come thousands of miles to visit them,” he said.
The pastor of the church in Trujillo, Venezuela, that Patty and partner Chuck Holcomb of New Home Baptist Church, Pisgah, were working with on door-to-door visits asked if the men could accompany him to the local fire station. There 21 firefighters listened to their testimonies and asked questions about the gospel message for nearly an hour and a half, each leaving with a Bible of his or her own and leaving the pastor with a whole new list of prospects.
“He (the pastor) got so excited, he said, ‘Let’s go see the mayor,’” Patty said with a laugh. “It was a wonderful time and so refreshing. As a result, in our association, we’ve already got people interested in signing up to go to Guatemala next year.”
Other groups shared similar success stories. Using a pictoral evangelistic tool and sprinklings of Spanish, a group led by Matt Kilgore, pastor of Pisgah Baptist Church, Pisgah, led 22 to the Lord without a translator, Quimby said.
Several more Alabama teams have trips to Venezuela planned for the remainder of 2005, including the final SBOM-sponsored trip, which will be to Upata in September.
The time is drawing near for Alabama Baptists to say vaya con dios — “go with God” — to their Venezuelan Baptist partners. At the same time, the excitement is building toward next year’s new partnerships with Ukraine and Guatemala.
Missions summits are slated for six locations around the state in September to provide information on missions opportunities in those two countries, as well as missions work in Alabama and the northeastern United States. For more information about the missions summits, call Quimby at 1-800-264-1225, Ext. 239, or e-mail him at rquimby@alsbom.org.
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