For Laurelle Stoudenmire, there is no question — an International Mission Board (IMB) appointment service is a meaningful thing.
It was at last November’s appointment service in Oklahoma City that she and her husband, Allen — members of Thomasville Baptist Church in Clarke Baptist Association — realized it was time to put feet to the calling to overseas missions that they had both felt for some time.
“We had never pursued it, but it had always been in our hearts,” said Stoudenmire, who has served as an IMB trustee since 1999. “At the appointment service, we decided to go ahead and pursue it, and we began the application process.”
As an IMB trustee, part of Stoudenmire’s role has been to help make decisions concerning the approximately 5,000 overseas IMB missionaries, as well as interview those who apply to join their ranks.
She had played a part in sending those who were appointed at the Oklahoma City service as well as serving on the committee that has approved 91 more for appointment at the service set for Nov. 15 in Huntsville, to be held in conjunction with this year’s Alabama Baptist State Convention, the first service of this sort held in the state since 2002.
But attending the Huntsville service and its related meetings will be one of her last acts as a trustee — Stoudenmire is stepping down from that role a little more than a year before she was originally set to leave it.
After that, she and her husband will head to the missions field.
Though they aren’t being appointed as career missionaries at the Huntsville service, Allen and Laurelle Stoudenmire — 67 and 65, respectively — have been accepted in the IMB’s Masters Program, a short-term service assignment for those age 50 and above who want to work on the international missions field.
The Masters Program — introduced during Laurelle Stoudenmire’s first year as trustee with the IMB — offers two- or three-year terms. The Stoudenmires’ assignment in Guatemala City will be three years. There they will strategize how to reach some of the least-evangelized villages and share the gospel door to door.
“We did not realize that Alabama was partnering with Guatemala until after we were matched with the job request there,” Allen Stoudenmire said, referring to the partnership the state convention will be kicking off with the Baptists of that nation in 2006. “One of my responsibilities on the field will be coordinating missions trips coming from the States to Guatemala, including Alabama.”
Serving in this type of consultant role is nothing new for Allen Stoudenmire, a retired insurance agent who has served alongside his wife as a North American Mission Board consultant to churches in Clarke and Choctaw counties.
“I always thought missionaries were either preachers or were in the medical field, and those were not my calling,” he said. “Only later in life did I realize that God calls people from all walks of life — and all ages.”
As they prepare for their own assignment — which they will leave for March 16 — they will observe as others are appointed at the Huntsville service to join the ranks of IMB career missionaries.
The IMB appointment service —is set for Nov. 15, 6:45–8:30 p.m., at the Von Braun Center in Huntsville. A missions fair will be held from 4:30–6:30 p.m.
“There are six appointment services each year, and each one that I have attended is so heart-touching,” Laurelle Stoudenmire said. “Dr. Jerry Rankin (IMB president) always gives an inspiring message to those being appointed as well as to the audience. Each one challenges believers to be involved in missions.”
For more information about the appointment service or the 2005 Alabama Baptist State Convention, visit www.thealabamabaptist.org and watch future issues of The Alabama Baptist.
Share with others: