A Different Kind of Missions Focus

If Baptists are known for anything, we are known for our passion for missionary work. The modern missionary movement throughout the world was spearheaded by Baptist ministers. In our American Baptist Churches, we have four mission offerings every year, and that is not including other opportunities to give to ABWM’s Love Gift, or United Mission giving with our congregations. We send people in our region out to serve with missionaries in Nicaragua and Mexico. We put our time and our money where our mouth is in carrying out the Great Commandment and the Great Commission. And this is a good thing.

There is a danger, though, in how we as Baptists have often begun to think about missions. Often times, we think we are a mission-focused church if we are generous enough to give to offerings, host missionaries, and send a few people from our church on a mission trip each year. And yet, in the process, we can support missions “out there” and forget about missions that are right in our backyard.

I have a passion about churches and the need for them to become “missional”. When I say “missional” I mean that the church not only thinks about missions as something that you do “over there”, but that we orient all that we do toward being missionaries. Even more, what I believe is that churches often neglect seeing their local community as a mission field. In fact, our local communities are our primary mission field. Acts I:8 says, “But you will receive power when the Holy Spirit comes on you; and you will be my witnesses in Jerusalem, and in all Judea and Samaria, and to the ends of the earth” (NIV). Sometimes we neglect the ends of the earth, it is true. More often than not though, we can do our church business and forget to go out with the good news of Jesus and reach our own Jerusalem.

It is with this in mind that Mike Oldham worked with a number of us to start a Region-wide initiative called the “Backyard Mission Project.” The first Backyard Mission Project was hosted by our church in Fowler, Colorado. For two days we went out and served people in our community in the name of the Lord. We replaced doors, painted in homes, cleaned yards, replaced sidewalks, and much more on September 11th and 12th, 2009. We invited people to church on Sunday, and we had a big pig roast that we invited everyone in town to attend. People were able to see that our church loved our community, and were eager to share God’s love with them with no strings attached.

As a result of the Backyard Mission Project, our small, aging congregation began to feel they had something to offer their community. We began to see that missions is not just something we hear about and give to, but something we do in our community, among our friends, right where we live.

 

 

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