Being back in my sending church on April 18 brought back a lot of memories.
Shades Mountain Baptist Church, Vestavia Hills, was finishing its 20th Global Impact Celebration, an annual five-day focus on missions.
I was a member of Shades more than 20 years ago when Pastor Danny Wood proposed a vision for our church. I’ll be honest: I thought he was crazy.
But as I prayed and fasted with other members of my church, God began to change my mind.
It wasn’t about our effort; it was about Him calling us to lay our goals, time, money and everything else at His feet. The vision that was set seemed out of reach — by human standards. But God!
God doesn’t operate by our puny standards. God loves us fiercely and wants His best for us. God wants us to play a part in His grander plan.
The GIC was, in part, the reason my heart and brain started to evaluate my vocational purpose. At the time I was working at the Birmingham Post–Herald, an afternoon newspaper. I had been there five years when I left for a call as a US/C–2 missionary with the North American Mission Board to South Carolina.
God called me out of a management job at a newspaper with a growing salary to a church and community service opportunity making less than half my salary.
God knew I didn’t need to rely on my salary for comfort and to pay my bills.
College loans were still being repaid, yet I bought a new car while on the missions field. God provided when human reason would say it wasn’t possible.
Even as a child, I always had a fascination with other peoples and cultures. I loved hearing and reading stories that introduced me to new sights, smells, sounds, etc.
The GIC brings that to church, allowing people to meet and hear from people who serve everywhere.
At one point, I was even one of the featured missionaries. Groups at the church supported the people I served by purchasing items from my wish list. They filled the list and then gave more in gift cards and donations that were then turned into ministry opportunities.
Their lavish gifts guaranteed continued ministry to a hurting area for years to come.
Returning to Shades recently was one of my first assignments as a new full-time staff member of TAB Media Group, where I worked previously part-time in the late 1990s–early 2000s.
Heart for home
My home state of Alabama has always held a special place in my heart. I know many of the back roads in and around Birmingham and Blount County, as well as roads around Talladega, Tuscaloosa and Decatur, all places I’ve lived and worked at some point.
While I moved again, this time to North Carolina, after my two-year missions term ended, my love and support for missions did not wane.
As a seminary student at Southeastern Baptist Theological Seminary in Wake Forest, North Carolina, I went on missions trips twice (to Jackson, Tennessee, and to Haiti).
Sharing good news
While in seminary and after, I worked at the Biblical Recorder, North Carolina’s Baptist news journal.
Serving at a Baptist paper is a great honor. There are tough topics to cover but the good news above all — that’s what we’re tasked with sharing.
Writing stories featuring church outreach, missions and missionaries brings satisfaction, especially when you see church members saying, “We can do that too.”
Our giving — to the Annie Armstrong Easter Offering and the Lottie Moon Christmas Offering, and to the Cooperative Program through our local Southern Baptist churches — supports missions, as well as our six Southern Baptist seminaries and other entities like GuideStone Financial Resources and the Ethics & Religious Liberty Commission.
Alone, we are not able to do too much to serve the Kingdom. But together … we can do so much more.
Shades Mountain highlights 20 years of ‘global impact’, see story here.
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