Former banker now invests in youth discipleship

March 10, 2003

Former banker now invests in youth discipleship
___By Gregory Tomlin
___Southwestern Seminary
___DALLAS--As a former vice president in the banking industry, Walter Mickels knows the value of a good investment.
___For the past four years his investments in the lives of young people participating in the North American Mission Board's World Changers program have been yielding eternal dividends.
___Mickels is a national missionary with the Southern Baptist Convention mission board. He coordinates World Changers projects throughout the United States and Canada. He and his wife, Sharon, were among the missionaries featured during the Week of Prayer for North American Missions March 2-9.

WALTER MICKELS talks with Barbara Webb, volunteer coordinator at Mission Arlington. The Arlington ministry was the site of a weekend World Changers preparation project. Mickels, a featured missionary for this year's Week of Prayer for North American Missions, is a North American Mission Board missionary charged with mobilizing students nationwide for participation in missions work. He is one of three national missionaries who coordinate World Changers projects, which combine housing construction or renovation projects with Bible study and discipleship training. (Gibbs Frazeur/NAMB Photo)

___World Changers unites the heart and hand in Christian action by rehabilitating substandard housing, but the goal of the program is to develop middle school, high school and college student participants into "lifestyle missionaries for a lifetime," Mickels said.
___"Our primary philosophy at World Changers is to change the world of the participant. Our goal is to expose students to missions in the hope that God will take them, prick their hearts and then draw them to a higher calling in the realm of missions."
___Mickels learned the value of the World Changers program in 1991 when he was invited by a friend to participate in a renovation project in Weslaco, on the Texas-Mexican border. The work awakened an interest in and commitment to missions, he said.
___Today, Mickels hopes to promote the same feeling among those who participate in World Changers.
___"I am convinced that many students are not 'on mission' because we have not taught them to be on mission. ... Once we expose them to it and they experience the benefit of giving of themselves, then God begins to call those students out to a higher level of commitment to missions."
___Mickels' service with World Changers takes him to cities around the country where he coordinates the food, lodging and material needs for project volunteers, and where he works with Baptist associations to enlist volunteers.
___Mickels also develops relationships with city officials, some of whom initially hesitate to accept assistance from a Christian charity. Most, however, welcome the volunteer labor and identify low-income homes in need of repair.
___Last year, Mickels coordinated projects in Iowa, Wyoming, Texas, Colorado, Louisiana and Indiana. Of the nearly 100 World Changers projects scheduled for 2003, Mickels will coordinate three projects in Texas, four in Wyoming, one in New York, two in Missouri and five in Canada.
___"We want to develop lifestyle missionaries," he explained. "We want to develop missionaries who, even though they go to an office every day or they go to a job every day, they still see themselves as being on mission. We want them to make the commitment of doing that several times a year on short-term mission trips. If God calls them to full-time vocational service, that is great."
___

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