For years, it was a “joy” for Ben Ward to serve as a missions professor and pastor who trained and sent missionaries to the nations.
Now he’s going himself. He and his wife, Lindsey, and their three children are headed to South America to serve in theological training and church planting.
“Please pray for our family as we adjust to new language and culture,” Lindsey asked Southern Baptist Convention messengers during the International Mission Board’s sending celebration June 14. The family is being sent by Highview Baptist Church in Louisville, Kentucky.
The Wards were among 52 new missionaries sent out during the June 14 celebration which took place during the Tuesday morning session of the SBC Annual Meeting.
“These 52 will join the roughly 3,600 missionaries and their 2,850 children who are living among the nations and sharing help and hope in Jesus’ name as your missionaries,” said Paul Chitwood, IMB president. “They’re steadfastly present among peoples and in places where the good news has yet to be preached.”
Also commissioned were two Alabama couples, members of the Church at Brook Hills in Birmingham and the Church at Shelby Crossings in Calera. They will serve in North Africa and the Middle East. Their faces, names and voices were concealed for security.
Chitwood said he couldn’t think of any better way to start the annual meeting “than to do what we’ve been doing for 177 years — sending out missionaries.”
Still work to be done
Southern Baptists have sent out roughly 25,000 missionaries during IMB’s history. But the work is far from done, he said — 7,000 people groups around the world are still unreached, and 3,000 of those have yet to be engaged with the gospel.
“Every day 157,690 people will die apart from Christ and spend eternity in hell,” Chitwood said.
That number is “heartbreaking and almost paralyzing,” he said.
“They need us, Southern Baptists. They need you. This is why we came together. And this is why we must stay together,” Chitwood said. “Were you to ask me why the Southern Baptist Convention exists, this is why the Southern Baptist Convention exists. The Lord in His kindness has allowed us to come to an understanding because of our belief in His Word that there is a solution to the world’s greatest problem, and we know what it is. It is the gospel.”
Wyatt Yaeger, one of the new missionaries who was sent during the celebration, feels the weight of that responsibility in a different way.
“I came to faith from Buddhism,” he said. He and his now wife, Wren, met while they were both serving with IMB in South Asia.
Nothing wasted
“We’re praying God uses those experiences to draw people to the gospel,” he said. The couple, sent by Imago Dei Church in Raleigh, North Carolina, are moving with their son to open a coffee shop among a Central Asian people group with little access to the gospel.
For Sarah Bennett moving overseas will be going home in a way. She’s taught English to refugees in sub-Saharan Africa for the past three years.
“One of my most memorable moments growing up was going to GA camp and hearing about how God was using people around the world and how He also desired to use me for His glory,” said Bennett, who is being sent by Southcrest Church in Lubbock, Texas. “Please pray for my family and myself as I move back to Africa.”
*Some names have been changed for security reasons.
View photos from this business session of the Southern Baptist Convention Annual Meeting here.
To view other photos from the 2022 Southern Baptist Convention in Anaheim, click here.
For more stories from the 2022 Southern Baptist Convention Annual Meeting, visit thebaptistpaper.org/sbc2022.
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