Monthly Archives: January 2020

The Key to Success

How do you measure success?  The world looks at bank accounts, houses, prestige, degrees earned, or your position in the company.  The athletic world looks at scores, games won, and championships attained.  The church may look at membership rolls, worship attendance, the number of baptisms, or the size of buildings.  All of these things are indicators or “marks on the measuring rod”.  But true success is obedience to God.  How can you be more successful than obeying God who created and sustains us, and calls us to obediently join Him in the work?  

There are more than one hundred successful missionaries serving in Kentucky through the Mission Service Corps.   These Mission Service Corps missionaries are having an impact in all areas of ministry through local churches, institutions, associations and individual ministries.  In terms of ministry opportunities, the sky’s the limit with Mission Service Corps missionaries because each one has a special ministry that fits their giftedness and uniqueness.   Each missionary felt God’s calling on their life to do the specific ministry they’re involved in.  

Mission Service Corps missionaries are committed to long-term mission service (4 months or longer for at least 20 hours per week) and are either self-funded or supported by partners while on the mission field.   Successful Mission Service Corps applicants are carefully screened to serve in specific ministries and following approval, are commissioned and participate in an orientation prior to their placement. 

If you want to be obedient to God, and therefore successful, prayerfully consider if God wants you to be a Mission Service Corps missionary by asking yourself these questions:

  1. Have you felt an unusual moving and/or stirring of God in your heart? 
  2. Has God alerted you to see or hear of missions and/or ministries that you could perform?
  3. Has God placed in your heart a strong desire to help others?
  4. Are you available to serve, either by going someplace or by remaining at home? 
  5. Did the Lord call you previously to missions or a special service and you were not able to or did not respond?
  6. Has God assured you that He will provide enabling for all He may call you to do?

If you answered “yes” to several of these questions, you are aware of God working in your world and He may be calling you to serve as a Mission Service Corps missionary. 

Let me encourage you to…

  • seek guidance from God’s Word, 
  • talk to and pray with your pastor or Associational Mission Strategist, 
  • discuss your feelings with family members, and most importantly,
  • pray, asking God to show you what He is doing and how you can be a part of it.

          The genius of the Mission Service Corps missionary structure is that every Baptist can be directly involved in missions.  For some, involvement means responding to go;  for others, it is providing so that someone else may go.  For still others, being involved means praying for those who go and their partners; and for many it is a combination of these.   

          Mission Service Corps missionaries won’t climb the corporate ladder, become a celebrity, be featured on ESPN, or make as much as Bill Gates, but they will be successful if they serve the Lord with gladness by answering His call to go.  Will your response be, here am I, send me?   

How Will You Be A Voice For Life?

These Syrian children were forcibly displaced and now live as refugees with their mother in Athens, Greece. Over half of the world’s refugees are children. In this family’s case, their father had been killed. These children live with their mother in an apartment building that had been converted into a makeshift urban “camp.”

Near the conclusion of the creation account found in Genesis 1, God’s Word makes a profound statement that highlights the significance and value of all human life.  Genesis 1:27 states, “So God created man in His own image; in the image of God He created him; male and female He created them.”

While there are many rich truths that could be gleaned from this single verse of Scripture, the fact that we are created by God in His image is what gives all men and women a deep sense of worth and value. Mankind is the crowning jewel or the zenith of God’s creation, and the Bible underscores this truth throughout the pages of Scripture. For example, John 3:16 says, “For God so loved the world, that he gave his only Son, that whoever believes in him should not perish but have eternal life.”

Throughout this month, many followers of Christ will set aside a time to remember and reflect upon the sanctity of human life and holiness of God.  Churches will celebrate the fact that life is a gift from God, and they will also grieve the numerous lives that have been lost prematurely due to abortion, abandonment, abuse, violence, persecution, or some other means. As believers, we are called to be a voice for the powerless and to serve and support those in need by sharing the grace, love, compassion, and good news of Christ with others. There are several ways that individuals and Kentucky Baptist churches can be a voice for life. Consider how God may be calling you to be involved.

  • We can pray for those whose lives are the most vulnerable, particularly the unborn, the disabled and the elderly.
  • We can stand ready to come alongside and minister to those who find themselves in the midst of a crisis pregnancy or the loneliness that often comes in the late stages of one’s life.
  • Maybe God is calling you to adopt a child, serve as a foster family, or minister to refugees. 
  • Perhaps God is asking you to play a part in the restoration and healing process with someone who experienced the emotional and physical pain of an abortion months or even years ago, but they still long for forgiveness and spiritual healing. Will you help that individual to know that God loves them and offers a new start in life?

In whatever way God leads you to be an outspoken voice for life, remember the truth that we are all made in the image of God. An individual’s worth and dignity is not based upon that person’s culture, their class, country of origin or the color of their skin. Every single person has value to God because they are made in His image, and each individual is precious to Him. Remember, whoever is precious and valuable to God should be precious and valuable to us.

For further questions or comments, please contact John Barnett, KBC Missions Strategist, at [email protected]. The missions mobilization team is here to serve you and your church, as you seek to fulfill the Great Commission both locally and globally.

A Soft Place to Land in a Hard, Hard World

Lee, Erica & Cheri

For the past 20 years women inmates across Kentucky have been shown the love of Jesus Christ through worship services and the Christ-centered teachings of Freedom Forever Ministries.  KY-MSC Missionary Lee Rust says they minister inside, behind the bars.  In addition to the worship services Lee and her volunteer team provides a 10-week Good Grief program and are reaching women who are often forgotten, with the Word of God.

“We see God transform lives right before our eyes,” Lee says.  “We get to know the women, share their heart and pain, and see God work through them.  We are His voice.  We are rewarded by seeing what He does, by seeing changed lives.”  Lee says it is not unusual to have women come up to her years later, ask if she remembers them and tell her how well they are now doing thanks to Freedom Forever Ministries.

Cheri, a former inmate who was incarcerated at the Western Kentucky Correctional Complex for three years, is more than happy to sing the praises of Freedom Forever Ministries.  She was very broken and really struggling while in prison, but said this ministry was “such a bright spot for the ladies in a really dark world we were living in.  They were such wonderful people, so loving and kind,” Cheri said.  “It encouraged my faith, kept me from lagging and from falling into the ways of prison life.  Once you came in, if you weren’t a believer I don’t know how you could go out and not be a believer, because you heard the Word in the message given by Lee each Wednesday, you heard the Word in the music and the seed was planted.  They were a soft place to land in a hard, hard world.  It was so nice to see a smiling face each week, to have somebody ask how you were doing, how your week was going.  They did their very best to take that extra minute here and there to be personal, interested and compassionate.  They were truly the hands and feet of Christ.”

Lee’s husband Eric and daughter Erica are also a part of the ministry.  Erica was not allowed to go into the prison until she turned 18.  Once she turned 18 however, Erica too joined in the ministry.  Cheri recalls Erica singing at the services, saying “she followed her parents’ servant hearts.”

Erica just recently married and, when choosing food for the wedding reception, reconnected with Cheri, who is now released from prison, has her life back together, and has her own business of making beer cheese.  Cheri said it was the first time she had seen this family since being released from prison and it was such an honor to meet on the “other side” and to “give back” to a family that had meant so much to her. 

Pray for Lee and Freedom Forever Ministries as they make a difference in the lives of many women when they are at their lowest.  To learn more about Freedom Forever Ministries go to https://freedomforeverministries.com/ or connect with them on Facebook (https://www.facebook.com/FreedomForeverMinistries/), where you will find a video of Cheri’s testimonial. 



The Power of Missions

If you or I were to write the script for the advancement of the gospel after Jesus’s death and resurrection, I dare say it would not unfold quite the same as it did in the book of Acts.  Perhaps we would have sent the disciples out on mission immediately after the resurrection or at least after Jesus’s ascension.  Jesus did not lay out a military strategy that called his early followers to “strike while the iron was hot.”  Rather, Jesus commanded them to wait until they were “clothed with power from on high” (Luke 24:49; Acts 1:4, 8).  The advancement of the gospel would not rely upon the ingenuity of man, but upon the power of God.  In fact, Jesus promised the power of the Holy Spirit to carry the call of God to the world. 

As Bob Burton notes, “The book of Acts . . . begins with waiting and preparation.  For the first-century church, the measure of the effectiveness on the mission field was directly related to the measure of spiritual preparation—praying, waiting, and expecting” (The Spiritual DNA of a Church on Mission, 10).  He goes on to explain that the church does indeed explode with growth, but only after a time of preparation (10 days of prayer and fasting).  The urgency of the gospel moving mightily through Jerusalem, Judea, Samaria, and the nations begins by preparation through prayer. By waiting and praying. 

Prayer is always instrumental in the expansion of the gospel in Acts.  Burton is correct that “there is always a direct connection between prayer and missions (The Spiritual DNA, 11).  For example, in Acts 3 Peter and John enter the temple area at the time of prayer and heal a man who is born lame.  As this event creates no small commotion, Peter uses it to preach the gospel to the gathered crowd.  This gathering then gains the attention of the religious leaders who arrest Peter and John for preaching Jesus.  In Acts 4 the apostles are threatened with death and then released with the understanding that they have been warned.  They immediately return to the church knowing what is at stake.

They report to the church what had happened and then begin to pray.  They pray not for deliverance from this threat or that Jesus would somehow ease their burden or change their calling.  No, they pray for God-given boldness (Acts 4:29).  As they pray, God physically shakes the room where they have gathered and fills them with the Holy Spirit. Thus, they continue speaking with boldness about the gospel of Jesus (Acts 4:31; 33). 

As we see, “preparation was the foundational missional principle for the church. It all began with a lifestyle of prayer, waiting, and expectation” (The Spiritual DNA, 11).  Oh, that the church would rediscover this principle.  What might God do with the church today that waits and prays?  What might He do with the church that pleads with God to move mightily in and through them by the filling of His Spirit?  He did it then; He can do it again.  If we can help your church in developing intentional prayer for the Great Commission, then please call on us at [email protected].