Lusk Baptist Church in Choctaw County helps ministry grow in Trinidad

For those who doubt that God can accomplish a great work through a small country church that would eventually touch a foreign island nation, look at the history of Lusk Baptist Church,” said Pastor Dennis Kennedy.
  
For three-quarters of a century, the ministry of the church, which lies along Highway 17 just south of Butler in Choctaw County, has touched the lives of the people of the Lusk community. 
  
And for the past 25 years, it has been the driving force behind a ministry hundreds of miles away on the island of Trinidad.
  
From its beginnings, the Choctaw Baptist Association church focused its ministry on reaching the needy and unsaved in and around the Lusk community. 
  
But initially that focus rarely reached outside the borders of the county.
  
In 1981, the church called Kennedy to the pastorate, beginning what would become one of the longest tenures of ministry in the history of Choctaw County. 
  
Under his leadership, the congregation began a missions focus that would change the way they viewed the ministry of their small church.
  
In 1982, the church began to send financial support to a minister in Trinidad, Thomas Balchan. Balchan was working to grow a fledgling Christian faith in his island nation by building churches to lead the Hindu people to Christ.
  
And helping that movement gain momentum was exactly what Lusk Baptist needed to do, Kennedy said.
  
“I believe that you don’t just start a ministry and expect God to work in it,” he said. “You find where God is working, and you get involved in it. He’s been working in Trinidad. That’s why we are there.”
 
Through the years, Lusk Baptist’s support of the Trinidad ministry has grown by leaps and bounds. What began as small financial gifts soon became a large-scale support for the ministry. 
  
Their efforts would not only help provide materials for Bible study but also would provide much-needed help for Balchan as he struggled to survive in a nation where his faith was not readily accepted. 
  
In 1984, the church provided a vehicle for Balchan’s use in his ministry, and later in 1999, their support allowed the completion of a 250-seat building for Mohess Road Baptist Church. 
  
Their donations allowed for such amenities for the building as sound systems, furnishings and carpeting. 
  
In later years, donations from Lusk Baptist also began to support the work of Balchan’s son Wayne, who organized children’s ministries on the island.
  
But the  congregation was only just beginning their support of the ministry in Trinidad. Through their benevolence, construction began on the Abba House in 2002. 
  
The home provided shelter for those who were cast out of their homes by family members because of their newfound faith in Christ.
  
Due in large part through the help of the small Lusk Baptist congregation, which includes less than 60 families, the Trinidad church has been bursting at the seams through the years, growing to more than 400 members in six villages.
  
The ministry has also produced a host of new converts to the faith who have surrendered to the ministry themselves, with those ministers now spreading the gospel in other villages. 
  
God’s work in Trinidad has had a profound affect on the island, reaching hundreds of souls for Christ in a predominately Hindu nation, Kennedy said. 
  
But, he added, the true measure of God’s work is not only the growth of the island church but also the change in the hearts and souls of the church members at Lusk who have given their long-term support to the ministry.
  
“This has done so much for our church,” he said. “It has changed us as much as it has changed Trinidad.”
  
Kennedy said their ministry in Trinidad is merely an outward example of the commitment to ministry that has been a part of the Lusk congregation for the past 75 years. 
   
“From the beginning in 1932 until now, the saints that have been added to Lusk Baptist Church have never faltered from duty nor been paralyzed by circumstances,” he said. 
  
“Little did that handful of people that organized Lusk Baptist Church in 1932 know that less than 75 years later, under the guidance of the Holy Spirit, that the church would be mostly responsible for having part of the building of Mohess Road Baptist Church in Trinidad.”