 SEARCH IBSA.ORG |
|
|
|
| QUICK LINKS |
|
|
|
|
|
| 12/21/07 ARCHIVE
|
Hedger, Medford, Davenport join IBSA leadership staff
By Lisa Sergent, assistant editor |
SPRINGFIELD | The Illinois Baptist State Association has filled three more positions on its state leadership staff. They are Rick Hedger, Mission Awareness and Education director; Grant Medford, Student Evangelism and Family Ministries director; and Dale Davenport, Education and Leadership Development director.
Nate Adams, executive director of the Illinois Baptist State Association, is excited about the caliber of staff the Lord is leading to IBSA. “I believe churches across Illinois will quickly benefit from their experience, their unique gifts and their servant spirits, and that the Lord will use them to take us to a new level of effectiveness in the days ahead,” Adams said.
Rick Hedger, Missions Awareness
Hedger, the former pastor of Calvary Baptist Church in Neosho, Mo., is the first to fill the Missions Awareness Education director role. In this role he will strive to increase awareness, understanding and participation of IBSA churches and associations in Southern Baptist Convention missions causes.
“Rick Hedger not only talks a good talk about missions; he is an Acts 1:8 practitioner,” said Dennis Dawson associate executive director of the Missions Team. “His passion for missions is contagious. As a result, I see a day coming when all Illinois Baptists will be keenly aware of the Acts 1:8 mandate and ready to be personally involved in obedience to God’s command.”
Hedger and Calvary Baptist Church were featured in a March 2006 Baptist Press article about the church’s commitment to Acts 1:8 in its Jerusalem, Judea, Samaria and uttermost parts of the world. When Hedger arrived Calvary Baptist Church was a worship-centered church. Through his leadership the 300-member church became a missions-focused church. The church now has partnerships with a local Hispanic mission, two associations in nearby southeast Kansas, a church recovering from Hurricane Katrina in Gulfport, Miss. and the Mandyak people of West Africa.
“I am so excited about the opportunity to serve Illinois Baptists as their Mission Awareness and Education Director,” Hedger said. “I hope to bring encouragement, zeal and passion for a balanced Acts 1:8 mission strategy to all Illinois Baptists. Just as Aaron and Hur held up the arms of Moses while Joshua and the army fought the battle in the valley, I desire to hold up the arms of IBSA Executive Director Nate Adams and Associate Executive Director Dennis Dawson as we support Illinois Baptists in their battle to take the Gospel around the world and across the street in a balanced Acts 1:8 strategy.”
He earned an Associate of Arts degree in Music Performance from Jefferson Junior College, a Bachelor of Arts degree from Missouri Baptist College and a Master of Divinity and Doctor of Ministry from Mid-America Baptist Theological Seminary.
Before going to Calvary Baptist Church in 1998 he served as senior pastor at First Baptist Church, Forrest City, Ark., and Grant Avenue Baptist Church, Springfield, Mo.; minister of worship at Southwoods Baptist Church, Memphis, Tenn.; and pastor of Delassus Baptist Church, Farmington, Mo.
Hedger and his wife, Sandee, have two children: Joshua, 27, and Kaila, 21. Joshua attends Midwestern Baptist Theological Seminary and Kaila attends Southwest Baptist University.
His first day at the Baptist Building was December 17.
Grant Medford, Student and Family Ministries
As Student Evangelism and Family Ministries director Medford will consult, equip and resource IBSA churches and local associations. He will also oversee major events such as Youth Encounter and Super Summer.
“Grant Medford is bringing an exciting dynamic in both of his major areas of responsibility,” said Pat Pajak, Church Strengthening Team associate executive director. “He has a heart for students and student ministers. Grant plans to put together a network for sharing ideas and looking at creative and innovate ways to ‘reach’ and ‘retain’ students in our churches.”
Medford is an Arkansas native and arrives at IBSA from First Baptist Church, Newport, Ark. where he served as student minister.
He graduated from Southwest Baptist University in Bolivar, Mo. with a Bachelor’s degree in Religious Education and a focus in Student Ministry.
Medford is already well known to many Illinois Baptists for his work with youth in the state. He spent 14 years in student ministry in Illinois at churches including Springfield Southern Baptist Church; Calvary Baptist Church, Alton; First Baptist Church, Crystal Lake and Swansea Church.
While in Illinois he worked with IBSA Next Generation Church Planting Director Charles Campbell and Gary Jennings (both former IBSA Student Evangelism Directors) on Youth Encounter. Medford was involved in the first Super Summer ever held in Illinois.
Medford has also traveled for over 12 years with his wife Jennifer performing original drama sketches for church events and student ministries.
“Student ministry has always been my passion,” said Medford. “I love working with students and student ministries because of the vibrant attitudes and creativity involved. I also believe that God has used this age group to do mighty things throughout history and I want to be a part of that again.”
He and Jennifer have two daughters: Megan, 9, and Meredith, 5.
Medford’s first day at the Baptist Building was December 17.
Dale Davenport, Education and Leadership
As Education and Leadership Development director Davenport will assist IBSA churches and associations with Sunday School, small groups, church training, discipleship and leadership development.
“Dale brings a wealth of both experience and expertise, having served as a minister of students, music and education, an associate pastor, church administrator and senior pastor over the past 25 years,” said Pat Pajak, Church Strengthening Team associate executive director. “He is an Illinois native, and most recently pastored a predominately African-American church in the Chicago suburbs, something quite unusual for an Anglo pastor.”
Davenport comes to IBSA from Hillcrest Baptist Church in Country Club Hills, Ill. where he has been serving as senior pastor.
He graduated from Northern Illinois University in DeKalb with a Bachelor’s degree in education. He also attended Mid-America Baptist Theological Seminary in Memphis, Tenn. where he earned a Master’s degree in religious education.
Davenport has served churches in Georgia, Louisiana, Tennessee, Mississippi, Pennsylvania and Illinois including Naperville Baptist Church and Tabernacle Baptist Church in Decatur. Davenport has also been Church Development director for the Chicago Metro Baptist Association the last seven years.
“I think Colossians 1:28-29 sums up the challenge I have before me as I join the IBSA staff as director of Education and Leadership Development,” Davenport said. “I am to join with others to proclaim Him and warn and teach everyone here in Illinois in an effort to make mature believers. I will work for this end under the leadership and power of the Holy Spirit.”
Davenport and his wife Sharon have two sons: Phillip, 30, Andrew, 26, and a foster son, Marcus, 27.
Davenport’s first day at the Baptist Building is January 2.
Hide Article Printer Friendly
|
|
LMCO: Leading students to reach for Jesus
By Don Graham |
CENTRAL ASIA (BP) | Chalk races across a blackboard as Anne-Marie Bennett* struggles to keep pace with her students. The names are coming quickly now – Napoleon, Washington, Stalin. She has asked her class to list the world’s greatest leaders, and they have plenty of suggestions. But the 37-year-old Southern Baptist worker’s next question is more telling.
“Between wealth, intelligence, strength and love, which is most important in a leader?” Bennett asks. She assigns a trait to each corner of the room and tells her students to move to the one they would pick. Once the shuffle is finished, only the “love” corner remains empty.
The exercise is part of the morality-based curriculum Bennett uses to teach English and share Jesus with university students in the former Soviet Union. It’s also a clue to the overwhelming lostness that consumes the Central Asian nation where she ministers. Fewer than 2 percent of Bennett’s people group identify themselves as evangelical Christians. Most are Muslim, though decades of communist rule ground their Islamic faith to a thin veneer.
Above Allah, many in this post-Soviet nation worship affluence. Here, what you have is more important than what you believe. From designer clothes to high-rise apartments, looking good and living well matters.
But with materialism also comes corruption. Students sometimes bribe professors for passing grades; police extort money from those they are supposed to protect. Other problems abound, too. War forced many from their homes, leaving thousands displaced. Others wrestle with dubious job security following the Soviet Union’s demise in the early 1990s. Unborn babies are routinely aborted as a substitute for birth control.
“There’s just a sadness,” Bennett says. “And if there’s not a sadness, there’s a hardness. People grasp for anything they can reach. And if [Christians] are not here to stand in the gap, what are they reaching for?”
She prays the answer will be Christ. Bennett’s goal is to see new churches spring up across the country, starting with her students. But it can’t happen without the chance to share the Gospel, and Bennett uses English as a tool to create that opportunity.
She’s dubbed her classes “conversation clubs” for a reason. There’s no mention of dangling participles or diagramming sentences. The idea is to practice and polish conversational English, building on language basics learned in earlier grades. A morality-based curriculum helps Bennett steer classroom conversations – and ultimately students’ thoughts – toward values and ethics, even faith.
But the conversations don’t end when the bell rings. Bennett’s ministry depends on opportunities to build relationships by interacting with students outside the classroom. Class field trips are regular events and guarantee time for Bennett to share her faith.
“I’m praying for a few people who will say, ‘We want to be discipled,’” she says. “I love working with students; I love sharing Jesus with them. I love planting those seeds and watching them grow.”
*Name changed for security reasons.
EDITOR’S NOTE: This year’s Lottie Moon Christmas Offering for International Missions focuses on missionaries who serve in the former Soviet Union as well as churches partnering with them, exemplifying the global outreach supported by Southern Baptists’ gifts to the offering.
Hide Article Printer Friendly
|
|
Two kinds of wish lists
By Nate Adams, Executive Director, IBSA |
“What’s on your Christmas wish list?” It’s a question many of us have asked the past few weeks, whether talking to a child, a grandchild, or that hard-to-buy-for adult. Now, with only a few days left before we celebrate Jesus’ coming, the question seems to take on a new urgency.
Whether young or old, the things people wish for at Christmas often come from two motivations – passion or need. One of my sons has a passion for music, so he wishes for an iTunes gift card or a new guitar amplifier. My other son feels a need to get around that exceeds his financial resources, so he simply wishes for gas money.
My wife Beth is a somewhat different story. As much as anyone I’ve known personally, she has the spiritual gift of giving. So her Christmas wish list is actually made up of things she’s excited about giving, rather than things she hopes to receive. Passion and need are still her motivations, it’s just that her passion for giving drives her instead to the needs of others.
I think that’s more what God’s Christmas wish list is like. His passion for a restored, love relationship with you and me led Him to give His only Son in order to meet our deepest need. After more than two thousand Christmases, it seems lost people are still at the top of His wish list.
What’s on your Christmas wish list? It’s a good question for us to ask of our churches as well. What is it we really want this Christmas, and in the year that follows? Are we focused on rewarding our own passions and meeting our own needs, or does our passion for the mission of God drive us to the needs of others?
Years ago I had a discussion with the choir director at my church about our upcoming Christmas program. It was a Wednesday night in mid-November, and about a dozen of us devoted choir members had already been practicing for several weeks in an attempt to learn music that was a bit of a stretch for most of us.
“James,” I said after one long rehearsal, “it looks like the twelve of us will invest at least forty hours in rehearsal over several weeks. Then in mid-December we’ll sing this 45-minute musical three times. If it’s like last year, there will be about a hundred and fifty people here to hear us. Ninety percent of them will be from our church, and ninety-eight percent of them are already professing Christians. I just wonder – is this the best way to invest our time this fall?”
James actually thought it was a good question, and we had an interesting discussion. Of course ultimately we went on with rehearsals and eventually delivered a very nice musical. Once again the church’s passion for worshipful Christmas music was fulfilled, and our need to have a decent music program in our church was met. But I wondered then, and have wondered several times since then, if a stronger passion for God’s mission and a heartfelt desire to meet the needs of our lost community might have led us to a different use of those forty hours.
Of course there are many, many churches that use music, and occasions such as Christmas, and lots of different church programs to effectively reach out to their community. Maybe the best of all scenarios is when a church can take ministries it’s passionate about and even those that help meet its own needs, and also creatively use them to express God’s passion for the needs of the lost.
But a lot of the time we have to choose between those two types of wish lists. And as we enter a new year, my prayer is that whenever that choice needs to be made, churches will gladly surrender their own wish list for one that looks more like God’s. His list is the kind a giver makes. And when we too make lists like that, we rediscover the truth that the Christ of Christmas taught us, that it is actually more blessed to give than to receive.
Hide Article Printer Friendly
|
|
The attitude of a servant
BY Mark Moses, IMB Missionary |
(BP) | As Southern Baptists find themselves in the midst of what is often termed the “Lottie Moon season” – the period around Christmas in which the denomination receives its annual offering for international missions – I can’t help but think about my wife, Jan, a career Southern Baptist missionary who's celebrating her first Christmas in heaven this year.
This time a year ago, Jan was making what would be the final entry in her journal that had intricately chronicled her three-year "adventure" (as we called it) with melanoma cancer. In her journal, which she posted online for thousands of supporters and prayer warriors to read, Jan had regularly and transparently poured out her heart about what transpired in her cancer battle. She sought prayers for whatever specific needs were at the forefront – for her treatment, for her doctors, for the emotional needs of our five children who would be left motherless with her passing.
But in this last journal entry, as the clock ticked away for Jan on earth, what do you think was the first thing she wrote about? What do you think was foremost on her mind?
The Lottie Moon Christmas Offering for International Missions, of course.
Jan wrote, “Our 5,000-plus missionaries depend on these funds each year for their salary, housing, vehicles, evangelistic projects, and medical needs (like us!!!) We are seeing amazing growth among people groups that were unreached in years past.”
She continued to beseech, “Just a few dollars can go a long way in providing basic support and resources for those who serve in difficult places.”
Within six weeks of this entry, Jan received her “promotion” into the presence of the Lord she served.
For the past 20 years, Jan and I have been blessed to be International Mission Board missionaries to the Philippines. In the prime of her life and ministry there, with five dependent children, Jan was diagnosed with melanoma in March 2004. A month later I was diagnosed with kidney cancer. Both cancers had less than 30-percent survival rates. Some people asked whether we resented the fact that our cancers possibly could have stemmed from serving overseas because of environmental concerns there.
Speaking at her memorial service in February, I posed the question, “What do you think Jan would have said to God, if 21 years ago, God would have told Jan, ‘I want you to sign on to be my missionary to the Philippines. It will be hot and sweaty. You will have to move your family and belongings more than 15 times. You will experience malaria, dengue fever, typhoid, and amoebic dysentery. Then you will suffer for three years with terminal cancer.” What do you think Jan would have said?
“I know exactly what Jan would have said: ‘Lord, sign me up.’ Jan would have none of us think that somehow she was deprived of anything here on earth. Indeed, Jan experienced a joy that few people ever find. Now she has eternity to enjoy the rewards of her faith and service.”
By the way, “Lord, sign me up” continues to represent our family’s motto, even in Jan’s absence. With my cancer in remission, I hope to return, along with our two youngest children, to the Philippines early next year to continue the work that, by God’s grace, Jan and I began. Serving Jesus cross-culturally constitutes a joy that not even cancer can take away.
During this Lottie Moon season, I pray that Southern Baptists will take up the gauntlet that Jan left behind and, through their offerings, continue the support for missions that Jan so urgently sought. May “Lord, sign me up” be the attitude of every Southern Baptist in terms of praying, going, and giving in whatever way the Lord leads.
Mark Moses, a career International Mission Board missionary to the Philippines, is the author of “An Uncommon Faith: The story of missionary Jan Moses and her journey with cancer.” Available from Hannibal Books at www.hannibalbooks.com.
Hide Article Printer Friendly
|
|
|
|
|