Texas Baptists pray for ‘longer arms’ to embrace a world that needs Christ_111504

Posted: 11/12/04

Texas Baptists pray for 'longer arms'
to embrace a world that needs Christ

By Craig Bird

For Texas Baptist Communications

SAN ANTONIO–A whirlwind of God-does-it-again stories, vivid documentation of the darkest spiritual and physical needs within reaching distance of Texans, straight-talking Scriptures that reveal God's redemptive heart, heart-felt music about grace and salvation–and even a finishing flourish of confetti–boiled down to a five-word prayer.

“God, give us longer arms,” said Baptist General Convention of Texas Executive Director Charles Wade.

Texas Baptists–rich in resources, blessed with visionary churches and used to thinking large–need those longer arms to “wrap around a big world that needs to know that God loves them,” Wade said.

Wade was keynote speaker at the annual BGCT missions emphasis, but he wasn't the only storyteller.

Charles Wade

Texas Baptists told about wrapping their arms around hurricane victims in Grenada, patients at a children's hospital in Mexico and music-loving concert-goers in Brazil.

Two more described fire truck evangelism along the Rio Grande River and job training for economically hard-pressed women all across the state through the Christian Women's Job Corps.

Four young women told how Texas Baptists had made a vast and eternal difference in their lives.

In Moldova, the poorest of the former Soviet republics, scores of young girls who likely would have wound up as prostitutes and scores of young men who likely would have wound up in prison are escaping that fate, “because of churches like Kingwood Baptist Church in Houston and Christian Emergency Relief International,” a program of Baptist Child & Family Services, said Marina Florio–herself a native of Moldova.

A supporting video focused on “a small, rural church in East Texas”–First Baptist Church of Huntington–that not only makes regular trips to the landlocked country but, on a single Sunday, raised more than $34,000 to support CERI's efforts.

Ten-year-old Charity Chambers charmed the crowd when she thanked them for helping her church, World Missionary Baptist in Fort Worth, operate a private Christian school she attends. “In Bible class, they told me how to become a Christian and how to tell other people,” she explained.

The video showed how the small, mostly poor congregation is building a nursing home that will open in January 2005.

Five-year-old Christine Kim has spent most of her life as part of First Korean Baptist Church in Lewisville. “I'm glad I learned that Jesus loves me,” she said.

Begun with 20 members in 1999 as a joint project of Denton Baptist Association and the BGCT, the congregation now runs more than 300 and has baptized 87 in five years. The church's vision is focused on home cell groups and already has 16 operating.

Katie Smith, a member of First Baptist Church in Athens, shared how her life was changed when her church teamed with Baptist congregations in Lubbock and San Marcos to undertake continuing work with a remote Indian tribe in the mountains of Mexico. In addition to evangelism, Bible studies, medical care and providing food, the churches jointly support the work of an Indian missionary.

Maria Flores

“More and more of our people are discovering the joy of taking Jesus away from their own church and carrying him to other places,” Wade said.

“Everybody we meet is someone whom Jesus Christ died for. What the world sees as trash, God sees as treasure. What we see as expense, he sees as a resource. Faces that may look unfamiliar and frightening to us are people God wants to introduce to us that we might become friends–and invite them into the family of God.

“We are positioned to truly become a multicultural people in a multicultural world. Our mission work no longer stops at the state borders but reaches into the 'uttermost' parts of the world. We are called to be both ministers of reconciliation and messengers of reconciliation, and if we don't get this right, nothing else we plan to do–or even pray about–will make any difference.”

Bill Tinsley, leader of the WorldconneX missions network, agreed great opportunities for sharing the Christian faith are available–but only if Christians are willing to look at new ways to undertake that task.

“I'm a product of the 20th century,” he said. “I grew up in a world where a missionary went away, and we didn't hear from them for four years at a time. We developed strategies and systems built around that truth. But this is the 21st century. We can be in constant contact with people anywhere in the world. Young people called to missions today often have international jobs and are no longer asking, 'Who will send me?' But they wonder, 'When will I go?'

“We have churches sending and funding their own members to other countries. We have identified at least 3,000 separate mission-sending agencies, and 30 or 40 of them might be a good match for what your church wants to do.

“We stand ready to help you explore your response to God's call to go and tell–much of which drives us back again and again to the biblical book of Acts.”