WorldconneX introduces itself; Parks also named_111703

Posted: 11/14/03

WorldconneX introduces itself; Parks also named

By Craig Bird

Texas Baptist Communications

LUBBOCK–WorldconneX, the Baptist General Convention of Texas' new missions network, stands “between a dream and a prayer,” according to network leader Bill Tinsley. And he hopes it always stays there.

“We are attempting to do something new in missions as Baptists, to take what never changes–God's vision for his world–and connect it to circumstances that are always changing,” he said during a workshop at the BGCT annual session in Lubbock.

Tinsley also announced the appointment of Stan Parks, a Cooperative Baptist Fellowship worker in Southeast Asia, as the second WorldconneX staff member. Parks, the youngest son of Keith and Helen Jean Parks, will be associate director and international coordinator.

Missions network leader Bill Tinsley speaks to BGCT messengers about the role of WorldconneX as a conduit between local churches and missions opportunities.(Eric Guel/BGCT Photo)

Keith Parks is former president of both the Southern Baptist Convention's International Mission Board and the Cooperative Baptist Fellowship's global missions office.

Tinsley said Stan Parks brings experience and insights from international missions work that will complement his own experience in local, national and short-term partnership missions.

In a formatting change this year, the convention's plenary sessions did not feature reports from agencies and institutions. Instead, more detailed information was presented in more than 60 breakout options.

One of those served as an opportunity to introduce the concept behind the new missions network.

“We do not intend to duplicate traditional missions-sending agencies or to compete with anyone,” Tinsley explained. “Whatever shapes that may take, WorldconneX's task will be to remain true to the dreams and visions God sends and to prayers for his leadership. It will always be a learning process, finding answers as we move toward where God is calling us.

“We don't have a roadmap about how to help churches and individuals carry out their own mission calls, but we are not without clues,” he added. “There are mission networks all around us already that we are just beginning to recognize.”

Texas Baptist churches are filled with people involved in international and global businesses, he pointed out. “Our Baptist universities have international student bodies, Buckner Baptist Benevolences is partnering with orphanages in 25 foreign countries, partnership missions is working with hundreds of congregations to make short-term mission trips a reality. We can start by helping everybody know what other Baptists are doing so we can take advantage of natural partnerships.”

Beyond that, WorldconneX can be a bridge between Baptists and other Christians and other mission organizations around the world, he said.

“The church is the source and the goal of missions,” Parks added. “We've gotten away from that, but WorldconneX's aim is to restore the local church to the center of the mission-sending activity, to introduce Texas Baptists to Christians in other places as equal partners.

“To be faithful to Acts 1:8, we have to do missions everywhere. That verse doesn't say we are to be God's witnesses first in Jerusalem, then in Judea and then in Samaria. It doesn't say to be God's witnesses in Jerusalem or in Judea or in Samaria. It says we are to do that in Jerusalem, in Judea, in Samaria and in the remotest part of the earth at the same time.”

Questions from the crowd of about 150 ranged from the philosophical to the political, from the specific to the general. Among them:

Q: “What would you do with a single woman I know who would like to work with her hands but putting her with a bunch of retired men is like oil and water?”

A: “First we'd try to find out more specifics about her call, if it is to a specific people group or place. Then we'd connect her with opportunities that matched.”

Q: “How would you screen people? Surely you wouldn't just help anybody who wanted to be a missionary go someplace.”

A: “We would expect the sponsoring church or group of churches to do the screening, but we would provide some guidelines and methods of making sure a person was healthy to go where they want.”

Q: “What will be your relationship with the Cooperative Baptist Fellowship and the SBC International Mission Board?”

A: “We have been in contact with CBF, the IMB and the SBC North American Mission Board, asking to meet with their leadership to talk about how we can best cooperate. If a Texas Baptist church asks us for help in doing missions with one of the established missions-sending agencies, then we see our task as helping them do that.”

Q: “Do you see WorldconneX ever becoming a sending agency?”

A: “That would be a major step backward. There is a continuing need for missions-sending agencies, and the existing ones are doing a good job. Becoming a sending agency would go against our vision.”

Q: “Our church has voted to support one of the IMB missionaries fired for refusing to sign the 2000 Baptist Faith & Message, but we don't know anything about liability insurance and work visas and things like that. Can you help?”

A: “Yes.”