A sometimes forgotten people group has stepped into the spotlight as one of the International Mission Board’s (IMB) nine affinity groups.
The Southern Baptist Conference of the Deaf celebrated this milestone, along with its first commissioning service honoring eight IMB representatives during its annual meeting July 26 at LifeWay Ridgecrest Conference Center in North Carolina.
Seven of the representatives were recommissioned to another term of service and the eighth is going to the missions field after short-term volunteer service. The appointees are among 32 representatives who use sign languages from various countries to share the gospel with deaf people. Of the 32, eight are deaf.
Matthew and Virginia Stuart, deaf affinity group leaders, want to recruit deaf people to serve in ministry and empower them to reach deaf communities. Within five years, they hope to increase the number of Southern Baptist representatives to the deaf to 200, including at least 150 deaf workers.
The identification of the deaf as an affinity group has not only opened doors for more outreach to the deaf, it also has opened the hearts of deaf who never thought they could or would be involved in missions.
“When we first moved to Russia, deaf Russians told us they couldn’t have a deaf church,” signed Tex Winsome, one of the representatives commissioned at the service.
“When we asked them why, the answer was always, ‘The hearing people tell us we can’t because God doesn’t call invalids into ministry.’”
Tex and his wife have spent more than seven years trying to discourage this mentality.
“We planted a deaf church, and as a result, three more deaf churches have been established,” Winsome said. For years, these deaf Russians lost hope, focusing on what people said they couldn’t do instead of what they could.
“Today the deaf of Russia have begun to understand that there is hope that the deaf can,” Tex said.
EDITOR’S NOTE — Names changed for security reasons. (BP)
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