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ROCKVILLE, Va. A missionary couple headed to the North Africa and the Middle East region in partnership with the International Mission Board sees evidence of God’s divine plan, as their family histories have overlapped. More than a century ago, an American missionary shared the gospel in his family’s village in the Middle East. Then 50 years ago, her great aunt and uncle became the founding members of the Texas church that is sending the couple to bring the gospel back overseas.
It’s the kind of pathway that IMB President David Platt loves to talk about, as he did in commissioning 29 new missionaries on May 10.
While they, like so many others, cannot be identified because of security concerns, their story is compelling as they recognized the opportunity to share their faith in the most dangerous of war-torn circumstances. Their shared heart for the nations drew them together while attending Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary, she explained.
“Five years ago, a war began in the Middle East allowing millions of people to become open to hearing the gospel,” he shared during the appointment service in Rockville, VA. Their work overseas has allowed them to witness many Muslim families coming to faith in Christ. Now they return with their young daughters with the assistance of Meadows Baptist Church in Plano.
Texas native Angela Banks was educated at Southwestern Seminary and West Texas A&M University in Canyon where she is a member and interned at First Baptist Church. More recently she served in IMB’s Hands On program and later was a nanny for a SWBTS faculty member’s family.
“Ten years ago, God used a trip to show me spiritual darkness that I’d never seen before,” she told those gathered for the commissioning service. “My response? God, I will do whatever you want me to do, to go wherever you want me to go, and stay where you want me to stay because for me, to live is Christ and to die is gain. Now, I am being sent by First Baptist Church in Canyon to the Hausa people in West Africa to see the light of the gospel push back the darkness.”
Another couple with vocational ties to the Austin-based Docent Research Group is returning to Madagascar where they walked through open doors for service, sitting under a tree with a team from their sending church in North Carolina. There they listened to a village elder describe how their community had been transformed by Jesus—“a Jesus hundreds of thousands have never known.”
“Growing up, I never wanted to be a missionary,” Nathan Baker admitted during the appointment service. His wife, Tessa, countered by sharing that she’d wanted to be a missionary since childhood when she learned of opportunities through the GA missions education program in her church.
Sent by Southern Baptists in partnership with two North Carolina churches, Tessa Baker said, “We are going, as God told Isaiah, ‘to the distant islands that have neither heard my fame nor seen my glory. And they will declare my glory among the nations.’”
Southern Baptists fund their missions enterprise by giving to the Cooperative Program through state conventions like the Southern Baptists of Texas Convention and through their gifts to the Lottie Moon Christmas Offering for International Missions.
The Board’s decision to move all of this year’s appointment services to the International Learning Center outside of Richmond has saved half a million dollars that will be reallocated overseas, according to a report given to trustees on May 11 by Platt.
Platt also offered a hopeful report of anticipating higher giving to missions, recognized Clyde and Elaine Meador for 41 years of ministry, and announced upcoming meetings with Southern Baptist leaders to brainstorm the types of mission pathways he envisions.
While the final tally of contributions to last year’s Lottie Moon Christmas Offering has yet to be announced, Platt said “things are looking better than ever,” expressing gratitude for progress toward exercising greater responsibility with short term finances and long term organization for the largest missionary-sending organization.
“We can’t just think like we always have as to who can go and how to get there,” he added. “We’ve got to make a way for the churches to go to the nations.” IMB leadership will meet with Southern Baptist pastors, seminary leaders and state convention leaders to brainstorm how those pathways will develop “if we really are serious about making the glory of God known” to the nations, Platt said.
Citing the current refugee crisis in Syria and surrounding countries, the leader of the largest missionary-sending organization discouraged “looking at it through the lens of political punditry,” and instead focusing on accomplishing the Great Commission. “We need to see the world in which God has put us.”
The IMB president said he anticipates the day when such sin and suffering will be no more, reminding those present, “As long as we’re in this world, remember every one of us finds ourselves in a foreign land, seeking a homeland—a city where we’re migrants, multicultural citizenry of an other-worldly kingdom.”
