Volunteer work grows in north Alabama under Adair

Recently retired Winston County director of missions Blanton Adair hopes to boost participation in volunteer missions among northwest Alabama Baptists by becoming the region’s first volunteer missions consultant. 
   
Twenty-one years as a pastor and 21 more as director of missions have given Adair firsthand knowledge of the many potential volunteers in the area. When north Alabama volunteer missions coordinator Al Henderson asked Adair to set up a volunteer missions organization for Blount, Cullman and Winston counties Adair immediately recognized the value of the program.
  
“There are just not enough people (career missionaries) to spread the gospel to the world — internationally or locally,” Adair said.  “Ever since I’ve been a Christian I’ve had a great desire to witness to people and to call others to do the same. This project is just a continuation of that desire.”
   
According to Henderson, the area is rich with potential missions volunteers. The problem is that many of them don’t know what types of opportunities are available, whom to contact or that training is readily available to them. Adair’s job will be to travel from church to church and motivate members to consider volunteering for missions work with the State Board of Missions. “They can volunteer anywhere from two weeks to two years, doing construction work, evangelism, training, teaching or medicine. They could do it on a local, state, countrywide or international level,” Adair said.
   
“My hope is that I will be able to tell them of the great need, show them what is available through our denomination, and motivate them from the Scriptures,” he added.
   
Volunteer missions organizations such as the one Adair hopes to develop have proven to be very effective in other Alabama associations. The concept of volunteer missions was one of the defining characteristics of the denomination before the turn of the 19th century. “They said, you can’t raise enough money to evangelize everyone. Turn people loose from their pews and send them out as volunteers,” Henderson said.
   
Since then, volunteers in missions have grown to be a significant portion of the North American Mission Board. Short-term missionaries  are also experiencing a growth spurt, increasing in number from 48,000 in 1991 to 172,000 in 1998.
   
“Their effects are significant,” Henderson said, citing a 1999 report from the Mission Service Corps that in the U.S. and Canada volunteers planted 72 churches, started 550 Bible studies and touched more than one million lives in some way.
   
Both Henderson and Adair hope that their grass roots recruiting campaigns will add to those numbers.
Adair also cites the positive influence volunteers in missions have on their home churches as part of the reason for launching the program.
   
“It (volunteering) is a step that helps them grow in their Christian lives,” Adair said.
Adair’s wife of 46 years, Jean, plans to pick up much of the training and teaching side of the consulting position.