When you can't go there, you can
participate by supporting those who can.

By James Dotson

You probably don't know many children in East St. Louis, Illinois, where 57 percent of the children live in poverty. But when those children go to the Christian Activity Center after school each day, your church and many others are involved.

From 3:30 to 8 p.m., the center offers basketball, arts and crafts, homework assistance, leadership development classes and special-interest clubs. Integral to the mix is a strong combination of Christian training, ranging from a general daily devotional period to small-group intensive discipleship. Children in desperate circumstances routinely are rescued from hopelessness, become committed Christians, and in turn help others come to know Christ and mature in their faith.

Such an effort is beyond the resources of any one local church. Instead, the center partners with a comprehensive network of financial, prayer and volunteer support radiating from that one neighborhood to the entire city, the state of Illinois and the United States at large.

"...the center partners with a comprehensive network of financial, prayer and volunteer support radiating from that one neighborhood to the entire city, the state of Illinois and the United States at large."

"Anyone who even comes here for a day realizes more than ever just how important missions work is," said Katie Caraker, a volunteer at the center who has become an advocate for missions in her church. "And it doesn't have to be overseas. It can be in your own backyard."

Southern Baptists call it cooperative missions. Pooled resources encourage greater effectiveness, cooperation with other local churches ensures efforts are not duplicated, and collective oversight ensures that projects God is blessing continue to receive resources. Across the United States and Canada examples abound of how partnership breeds a sort of divine synergy--the collective result for the Kingdom of God often far exceeds the sum of individual efforts.

Reaching the inner city

The Christian Activity Center in East St. Louis is typical. The director, Chet Cantrell, and his wife, Michelle, are missionaries of the North American Mission Board (NAMB), which pays the bulk of their salary and provides other resources and assistance. Utilities, insurance and other expenses are provided by the Illinois Baptist State Association. The local Metro East Baptist Association provides operating expenses. But the financial commitments are just the beginning.

The Metro association also provides local volunteers to help with staffing. Student summer missionaries and youth groups help in the summer. Girls in Action missions organizations in local churches around the country prepare kits of school supplies to give the children. A local Challengers mission education group also volunteers at the center. And to further leverage the Baptist funding and volunteer labor, private corporations have provided grant money for capital improvements.

"The whole cooperative effort is what keeps us afloat, and we couldn't do ministry without it," said Chet Cantrell.

Adds Phyllis Aydt, a full-time volunteer who leads the center's Kids for Christ club: "The needs in the inner city are so great that we wouldn't exist if it weren't for prayers and financial support from local churches and even Christians around the country, who help through the association, the state convention and the North American Mission Board."

Starting churches together

One of the most effective means of building the kingdom of God historically has been through starting new churches, and it remains a mainstay in Southern Baptists' collective efforts.

Through church planter apprentices, funded entirely through offerings directed to NAMB, young pastors can go into an area on full salary and put in the long hours required to get to know the neighborhood and build relationships that form the basis for a new church. In other cases, the cooperative assistance comes in a variety of salary supplements and shared efforts on state, local and national levels that result in vibrant works where nothing existed before.

In Wamego, Kansas, Trinity Baptist Church has shared the enthusiasm for supporting new church plants in its area, sponsoring four new congregations in the past four years with plans for two more in the coming year, according to Randy Cowling, director of missions for the Kaw Valley Baptist Association.

One of those congregations, Emmanuel Southern Baptist Church in nearby Manhattan, Kansas, began when retirees Gail and Barbara Dexter felt a growing sense that they needed to be involved in reaching people outside the church. As it turned out, the area they wanted to help was already targeted for a new church by the association.

"It was quite a shock when God began to show us that, 'I want you folks to get the work started rather than waiting for someone else to get it started,'" said Barbara Dexter.

"It wasn't that we were dissatisfied with the church we were in, it was just that we knew there was a group of people that just weren't being reached in the Manhattan area."

After consulting with the director of missions in the two associations which bordered the proposed church location, they were linked with Trinity. Eventually a pastor was chosen--funded by the mission, Trinity, the association and NAMB.

The association's conviction "is that we're basically churches working together to build the kingdom," Cowling said. "I think it would have taken a lot more time--and we probably would not have had quite the result--if we hadn't been all working together. The cooperative effort of all these entities makes it possible … Together we're able to reach more people than we would individually."

Sharing ideas that work

Partnerships also allow churches and individuals to readily take advantage of new methods God is using in other areas to draw people to Himself. Ideas and innovation can bubble up from almost any point in the system and be put to widespread use.

It was a trio of street evangelists from San Antonio, for example, who sparked NAMB's current Inner City Evangelism ministry. The group walked up to the booth of the Crossover Atlanta initiative during the 1995 Southern Baptist Convention and reported several hundred professions of faith. Their effectiveness piqued the interest of NAMB staff, who found a way to incorporate their methods into conferences that also included training in personal evangelism and drug rehabilitation ministry.

"If the association, state and churches weren't interested in doing this, we wouldn't be accomplishing what we're accomplishing,"

Today, nearly 6,000 professions of faith have been recorded as a result of Inner City Evangelism (ICE) Con-ferences held in major metropolitan areas over the past two years. The conferences are led by an "ICE team" of about 15 volunteers who both teach and demonstrate methods for reaching the inner city with the gospel. NAMB pays their expenses, but local churches, associations and state conventions make it work by serving as hosts and handling all promotion and recruitment.

Those receiving the training go home to energize their own evangelism efforts, and then train others.

In Louisiana, state and association leaders are planning their own conferences modeled after a national ICE conference in New Orleans last year that resulted in 1,301 new Christians.

"Nothing short of fantastic," was the response of participant Webb Coleman, pastor of Victoria Baptist Church in Baton Rouge. "Our God definitely moved." For him, the conference was an awakening to the potential harvest that was available for his own congregation.

"I was aware of the inner city around our church, but I was not aware of the hunger in the inner city around us," Coleman said.

Bo Mitchell, a Florida-based volunteer who coordinates the ministry, said partnerships are what make such efforts possible. "If the association, state and churches weren't interested in doing this, we wouldn't be accomplishing what we're accomplishing," he said.

The FAITH Sunday school-based evangelism initiative is another example of how good ideas rise to the top. Originally developed by First Baptist Church of Daytona Beach, Florida, FAITH was marketed by LifeWay Christian Resources--the Southern Baptist publishing arm--and endorsed by the North American Mission Board. State convention staff and other consultants provide training and field servicing as part of their evangelism and Sunday school development assignments.

The result: lives added to the Kingdom of God.

"FAITH has changed us," said Jerry Webb, pastor of Flomich Avenue Baptist Church in Holly Hills, Florida. Attendance at his church increased from 85 to 115 since they initiated the FAITH program, which directly resulted in 38 professions of faith in Christ.

"A good portion of our people involved in FAITH came into the church through FAITH," Webb said during a LifeWay-sponsored church leadership conference last year.

Empowering volunteers

Partnerships also allow leveraging efforts through large-scale coordination of volunteers. Like the new Christians in the FAITH program who wanted to immediately tell others, cooperative missions can provide opportunities for Christians to discover their unique fit in evangelism.

The ICE team's Mitchell, for example, is a full-time Mission Service Corps volunteer missionary who helps coordinate ICE conferences nationally and other evangelism training programs for the state convention in Florida. MSC volunteers, who often provide their own support, find more acceptance of their ministry from churches and individuals because of the endorsement and oversight provided by their MSC status.

One of many short-term volunteer options is a comprehensive network of Disaster Relief volunteers. Coordinated at both state convention and national levels, the network allows Southern Baptists consistently to be at the forefront of response.

On an even larger scale, this year thousands of students and adults will participate in 51 World Changers/ World Tour projects. Youth groups have the opportunity to share their faith, build a positive identity for local Southern Baptist's and gain experience that could spark a lifetime of commitment to missions and evangelism.

"World Changers was right down my alley," said bivocational youth minister Mike Kearney of Tuscaloosa, Alabama. "I didn't have to do a lot of research and find some type of mission trip. Those were taken care of by World Changers."

Whether through prayer, financial support or volunteerism, opportunities for helping to reach the world for Christ never have been more varied. Fortunately, partnership makes it easier for individuals and churches to extend their reach.

James Dotson is a News and Information Specialist for the North American Mission Board. Contributors were Lynne Jones, News and Information Specialist, and Marty King, Director, Convention Relations Team.