Madison Association churches host appointees

This year, Regina Berry gave part of her international missions offering in the form of Pop-Tarts, directions to the nearest Wal-Mart and two lunches at Applebee’s.
   
Berry and her husband, Benny, who serves as pastor of Bevill’s Chapel Baptist Church, Hazel Green, hosted International Mission Board (IMB) missionary appointees Mark and Sarah Jackson (names have been changed for security reasons) in their church Nov. 13.
   
The Berrys’ church was one of 36 Madison Baptist Association congregations that helped make Huntsville a “home away from home” for the 89 missionaries appointed at the Nov. 15 IMB missionary appointment service at the Von Braun Center. 
   
“Every missionary appointee had a welcome basket waiting for them in Huntsville, either at the airport or in their hotel room,” Berry said. “Each host church did that for the individuals and couples they were hosting.” 
   
Some of the families in the churches also took the missionaries out to eat while they were in Huntsville, helped them find places they needed to go and gave them rides to and from the airport.
   
Berry, a ministry assistant at Madison Association, served as coordinator for the missionaries and their host churches — churches that proved receptive to the personal missions stories they heard, she said.
   
But Berry best saw the receptiveness at her own church, where the Jacksons put faces to missions work for the congregation.
   
“It was exciting for our church to be a part of what the [Jacksons] are a part of — everyone is still talking about it,” she said. 
   
“Prayer is important and it was exciting for our church members to see that they could help the work through prayer.”
   
The appointment service in Huntsville and the four days of orientation-type meetings that accompanied it signaled the official start of the Jacksons’ journey toward the northern Africa and Middle East region, where they will spend the next three years spreading the gospel.
   
At Bevill’s Chapel Baptist, the couple was able to enlist prayer partners and entreat church members to lift up specific needs in the coming months.
   
“It was great to get to relate to other Southern Baptists that are joining us in prayer support. Everything we do must be bathed in prayer,” Mark Jackson said. “We need all the help we can get.”
   
The networking of missionaries and churches also allowed Huntsville-area Baptists to be able to have someone specific to look and pray for during the appointment service.
   
“It is always great to see the smaller churches participating in missions events like the appointment service and allowing us to share with them a part of who we are and what we are going to do,” Jackson said.
   
Benny Berry said it had been about seven years since his church had hosted a missionary speaker.
   
“It was very special to our church people,” he said. “I’m very glad we had the opportunity to get to know them and be a part of their work.”
   
Church member Lori Carter said hearing from the Jacksons was a “real encouragement” to her.
   
“Knowing the way that the world is nowadays and knowing that they will be in a top security area is inspiring,” Carter said. 
   
“It is scary but it is awesome to see what God does with it.”