In word and deed

By Adam Miller

Two blocks east of the “El” Train Red Line in Uptown Chicago, a lady named Susan limps over from under a covered bus stop.

“That’s my spot. I was here. I just had to sit down.”

She marks her spot by hanging two canvas bags on the fence where a dozen men and women are lined up outside Uptown Baptist Church.

“I was here. This weather is killing my arthritis.”

Her voice is husky but kind. She limps toward the bus stop, sits and takes a sip from something tightly wrapped in brown paper, looks over her shoulder again, then settles back against the glass enclosure.

As the line builds, she comes back.

Next Monday, she says, they’re giving out shoes.

“Could you help me with this?” asks Susan, holding up a kids’ Revenge of the Sith wristwatch six hours fast. “It’s a cheap watch. I don’t know how to fix it. It’s not a very nice watch.” 

Every Monday around 4:30 p.m. the iron gate separating Uptown Baptist from the sidewalk creaks open and some 350 homeless men and women file into pews for a word from scripture then to the basement for a hot meal.

Shouldering computer bags and backpacks, a flock of Chicagoans scatter from the train and the buses toward home or an evening job in one of the city’s most diverse communities.

This is North American Mission Board missionary Michael Allen’s mission field.

“Uptown is one of the most diverse places in the Chicago area,” says Allen. “It's diverse in almost every way you can imagine -- ethnically, socio-economically, in gender and in age. It’s home to retirees, young couples, newborns, the brilliant and the mentally ill.”

Nearly 80 languages are represented in Uptown’s public schools.  The neighborhood’s population includes government officials, college professors, business professionals and a sub-culture of “down-and-outs.”

Allen is one of more than 5,300 missionaries in the United States, Canada and their territories supported by the Annie Armstrong Easter Offering®. He is among the NAMB missionaries featured as part of the annual Week of Prayer, March 7-14, 2010. This year’s theme is “Live with Urgency: Share God’s Transforming Power.” The 2010 Annie Armstrong Easter Offering’s goal is $70 million, 100 percent of which benefits missionaries like Allen.

Allen has worked with social ministries for years, beginning with his tenure at Moody Bible Church and continuing with leadership at homeless and recovery ministries throughout the city. His ability to interact across a broad spectrum has given the Jamaican-born pastor a voice among Chicago businessmen and politicians. 

“One day I could be at a press conference with the mayor of Chicago and all the movers and shakers and be in a suit and tie, then later that day on the street talking to somebody who’s drunk and just gave his girlfriend AIDS,” says Allen. “It's a powerful thing. It's an amazing thing. It's God at work changing people's lives and I get to be used by Him to accomplish it.”

Read more at onmission.com >>>

Garden of the Gods

What could be better than serving as a North American Mission Board missionary in picturesque Colorado Springs? After all, the city of 380,000 backs up to the base of snow-capped, 14,000 feet-tall Pikes Peak on the edge of the Rocky Mountains.

Money and Outside magazines have both deemed it as No. 1 on the list of the best places to live in the United States. It’s perceived as a Christian “mecca” and nicknamed “The Evangelical Vatican” because so many evangelical Christian organizations are headquartered here – Focus on the Family, The Navigators, the International Bible Society and Young Life, just to mention a few.

Colorado Springs is a military stronghold, the location of the Army’s Fort Carson, Peterson Air Force Base, Schriever Air Force Base, NORAD and the United States Air Force Academy. 

The 6,000-foot high city is headquarters to the U.S. Olympic Committee, the U.S. Olympic Training Center, and the national sports federations for Olympic bobsledding, fencing, figure skating, basketball, boxing, cycling, judo, hockey, swimming, shooting, triathlon, volleyball and wrestling.

The Colorado Springs area is also a vast wilderness of “lost” souls. Just ask Bill and Carol Lighty. 

Bill, 53, serves as a NAMB national missionary and director of missions for the Pikes Peak Baptist Association, which includes about 50 Southern Baptist churches and church plants. In a metro area of more than 600,000, 83 percent – some 500,000 -- never darken the door of a church -- any church.

“God really broke my heart over the lostness of the Pikes Peak region,” says Lighty, who – with his wife of 32 years, Carol – has worked in his current assignment two and a half years. Prior to that, he spent almost 21 years as pastor of Chapel Hills Baptist Church in Colorado Springs. The Lightys have two grown daughters, Trisha and Ashley, and two granddaughters.

Lighty is one of some 5,300 missionaries in the United States, Canada and their territories supported by the Annie Armstrong Easter Offering® for North American Missions. He is among the North American Mission Board missionaries featured as part of the annual Week of Prayer, March 7-14, 2010. This year’s theme is “Live with Urgency: Share God’s Transforming Power.” The 2010 Annie Armstrong Easter Offering’s goal is $70 million, 100 percent of which benefits missionaries like Bill Lighty.

Although Lighty says Mormonism and Catholicism are both strongly entrenched in the Colorado Springs area, “there’s half a million people here who don’t know Christ.”

In addition to Pikes Peak, another of Colorado Springs’ famous landmarks is the “Garden of the Gods,” so-called because when it was named in 1859, it was described as a “place fit for the assembling of the gods.” Lighty said this focus on the mythical gods – but not on the one true God – is symptomatic of many of the residents of the Colorado Springs area.

“In a very real sense, Colorado Springs is not godless because the people here have a lot of gods they worship,” he says. “Some worship nature and the mountains. Some worship skiing. Some worship the metaphysical. Spiritualism is a big element of our culture, and we have a strong Wiccan movement. Some worship their motorcycles. With five military installations here, many worship the military and the goal of getting promoted to the next rank.

“So our challenge is competing with all these other gods plus the mountains – where there’s something to do 12 months out of the year -- in order to help people worship the one true God versus their multiple gods,” Lighty says.

Read more at onmission.com >>>

The Power of Prayer

By Dave Storey

I love how the Bible describes Elijah as a man just like the rest of us, but we also know that he prayed fervently. Though we always have prayer meeting on Wednesday nights, sometime last November I sensed that we should also be praying on Saturday nights – to have a time when people could just come and gather near the front of the church and pray for the next day’s services, and that God would show up with convicting power, as mentioned in John 16:8.

A few weeks after we started having prayer on Saturday nights at our new church in Blackville, New Brunswick, we witnessed God’s movement in the life a young woman named Jennifer. Just like a lot of people who grew up in churches around here, she was a Baptist and had “religion,” but she wasn’t genuinely converted. That Sunday night she was really broken and responded to the invitation I extended after warning people to flee from wrath to come, to be born again. The Holy Spirit convicted her that she was religiously lost, and her mother recommitted her life to Christ, too!

I think that when people come and pray, it invokes the Holy Spirit’s presence. When we ask God to show up, we can expect Him to move. Sometimes it will be conversions of the lost; sometimes convictions for believers. It really boils down to us coming to God; not too much happens if we’re not seeking His face.

Dave Storey is a North American missionary serving in Doaktown, New Brunswick, Canada.

Shalom

Tonight I worshiped with my Jewish brothers and sisters in Christ—members of the Southern Baptist Messianic Fellowship. It was a wonderful way to begin my time at the annual Southern Baptist Convention being held in Indianapolis. They are a warm and welcoming group, and they have a passion for seeing nonbelievers come to Yeshua. 

The Shabbat service was a beautiful blend of Hebrew and English. With a theme of encouragement and strengthening of the saints, Rabbi Ric Worshill exhorted his audience to go out and make disciples. 

The SBMF is working with the North American Mission Board and LifeWay to produce evangelism training tools to help teach believers how to share the gospel with non-believing Jews. 

Carol Pipes, editor