Last September, Chris Baker, director of missions for Clarke Baptist Association, took a group of pastors to northeast Michigan, where they preached revivals at several churches in Pines Baptist Association.
While there, the team struck up a quick friendship with Mike Wiggle, pastor of Hubbard Lake Baptist Church. Wiggle brought a construction team to Alabama in March of this year to work with Clarke Baptists. On this team was Jason Livvix, who was almost a year into his first pastorate in Michigan.
Enthusiastic about the opportunity to bring more Alabama Baptists to Michigan, Clarke Association pastors decided a team could come up to help with Vacation Bible School (VBS) this summer. Livvix proposed the idea to his members but received no response initially. When he brought it up again a few weeks later, a woman in the congregation asked Livvix a question that would shock Alabama Baptists: “What is Vacation Bible School?”
Answering that question in word and deed is just what the partnership between the Baptist State Convention of Michigan (BSCM) and the Alabama Baptist State Board of Missions (SBOM) is all about.
“This partnership has been wonderful for our state,” said Ted Stephens, Cooperative Missions Ministries team leader for the BSCM. “Volunteers from Alabama have been a big blessing to many of our churches.”
Since the partnership began in 2007, missions teams from Alabama Baptist associations have accepted invitations from Michigan Baptist churches to help with prayer walking, VBS, backyard Bible clubs and construction projects. Though several project invitations for 2009 are still available, the partnership is going strong, said Scotty Goldman, an associate in the office of global missions for the SBOM and mobilization associate for the Alabama-Michigan partnership.
“Ten of the project requests submitted by Michigan have been accepted by Alabama Baptists,” Goldman said. “However, this is only a fraction of the ministry that is taking place.”
Goldman said of the 15 Baptist associations in Michigan, 13 have partnered with Alabama associations. These partnerships have resulted in many doing missions work in Michigan directly with their partners, Goldman said.
The partnership has not been one-sided, however. Michigan Baptists have come to Alabama as well, working on construction and other ministry projects.
“The work they have done in Alabama has given our churches insight, new ideas and a sense of being on mission,” Stephens said.
In a state where 80 percent of the 10 million residents are lost, learning new ways to share the gospel is critical. That is an area where the Alabama-Michigan missions partnership (to conclude in 2011) is so valuable, said Michael Collins, director of the BSCM.
“We hope the partnership will help strengthen and give a different vision to our people where they are,” he said. “And we hope [our churches] can gain a greater sense of what we can do.”
The lack of experience on the part of pastors and lay leaders has inspired Baker to make the partnership between Clarke Association and Pines Association a long-term commitment.
“These churches are very similar to our own,” Baker said. “There’s a real need for vision and leadership, and after we went up, we knew we had to do something to encourage the churches we had been part of.”
Baker said he and several pastors continue to communicate with friends they made in Michigan.
In March, his group hosted a team of missions volunteers from Michigan, who worked alongside Clarke Baptists in construction and outreach projects. In July, an Alabama team is headed to Michigan to continue the partnership Clarke Baptists are nurturing.
“A lot of this is new to the Christians in Michigan, many of whom are first-generation believers,” Baker said. “They don’t get opportunities to share their faith on a regular basis, and it’s a learning experience for us all to pay attention to what we take for granted.”
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