April 10, 2000
IMB appoints 38 missionaries in Fort Worth service
___FORT WORTH (BP)--When she joined a volunteer missions project in Guatemala in 1997, LuSinda Haskins Ray of Oklahoma sensed God calling her to become a career missionary, but she struggled with how a young widowed mother could possibly fulfill such a call.
___"God's only response was, 'Be obedient to what I have called you to do, and I will make a way,'" she said.
MARK AND KRISTIE ADERHOLT of Fort Worth share how God called them to career overseas missions. They were among 38 missionaries appointed during an International Mission Board appointment service March 31 at Travis Avenue Baptist Church in Fort Worth. The Aderholts will serve in the Central and Eastern Europe region. (BP photo by Sandy King)
___Then last January she met Matthew Spann, a Southern Baptist missionary to Russia and recent widower. They fell in love and plan to marry in May.
___"God graciously brought our lives alongside each other, filling a hole that had been left in our hearts and in our families' lives," Ray said. "Our losses are hard to understand, but God has generously redeemed them. When I look back on my life and see what God has done to work out his calling ..., I am humbled and stand in amazement of an awesome God."
___Ray is among Southern Baptists' 38 newest international missionaries, appointed March 31 in services at Travis Avenue Baptist Church in Fort Worth. The appointment service capped global missions week at Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary, which included missionaries speaking in classes and International Mission Board leaders preaching in chapel.
___In addition to the 38, three additional apprentice missionaries were presented during the appointment service. Apprentice missionaries meet all the requirements for career appointment, except for ministry experience, which they gain overseas during their three-year term.
___In the appointment service, the new IMB missionaries testified how God's call to overseas missions today comes in a variety of ways--some as traditional as an Acteens convention or a visit to Glorieta, a Baptist conference center in New Mexico, but others as unconventional as an e-mail relationship with a missionary overseas or a backpacking and canoeing trip into Central America.
___Volunteer missions projects overseas and taking the "Experiencing God" course, meanwhile, continue to stand out as primary vehicles for leading people to missions service overseas.
___And just as the means for the call varies, so do the professional backgrounds of the candidates. New missionaries today no longer fit the stereotype of pastors and church staff and their spouses.
___Among the 38 appointed were a chiropractor, a childcare center director, a businessman, a lawyer, a doctor, a teacher, a nurse, a clinical technician, a former independent missionary and others representing a variety of professional backgrounds, including the pastorate and church staff positions.
___In his charge to the new missionaries, IMB President Jerry Rankin likened them to the Apostle Paul, who made what appeared to others to be "foolish decisions" but which God used in dramatic ways to spread the gospel throughout the world.
___Paul could have been a "prominent leader of the early church in Jerusalem, been at the forefront of the harvest that was sweeping Jews into the kingdom and gained an unimaginable reputation for himself, if he had not had such a passion for the Gentiles," Rankin said.
___"How foolish to give all that up to traipse about over wilderness and desert, to be attacked by wild animals, shipwrecked, subjected to hunger, deprivation, to be misunderstood, stoned, beaten and imprisoned, when he could have stayed in Jerusalem and Antioch and enjoyed a comfortable and successful pastorate," he said.
___"Many people could consider you equally foolish," Rankin told the new missionaries. "Some of you have family that just cannot understand why you would leave a successful career and an affluent lifestyle. Your church has provided well for you and reminded you how much you are needed here in America.
___"But something compels you, like Paul, to turn your back on all the advantages of staying in your comfort zone in order to carry the gospel to those Christ died to save and who are still waiting for someone to proclaim to them that God loves the whole world."
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