Colorado missions trip sees many conversions
JEFFERSON CITY – Over 90 professions of faith were the hallmark of a recent mission trip to Colorado by the Missouri Baptist Convention (MBC), which ran July 21-28.
A total of 267 volunteers were sent to do evangelistic missions around Denver, which is known for being a highly unchurched city. The volunteers came from 15 churches from across the state. There were seven different ministry sites in Denver. Approximately 700 adults and children were ministered to through Backyard Bible Clubs and Vacation Bible School. One of the leaders of the trip was David Krueger, pastor, First Baptist Church, Linn.
“The purpose of the trip was threefold,” he said. “The first reason was to bring the Gospel to one of the most spiritually dark areas of America. Denver is one of the most unchurched metropolitans of the last century.
“The trip was also designed to be a shot in the arm for some of our work out there. Some of our Southern Baptist churches are small and declining and needed a spiritual shot in the arm. When you bring 300 people to their city hopefully you can make a pretty important impact on those churches and their work.
“The third reason was to develop youth leadership—to help our young people understand what missions are all about and give them some hands-on experience in mission work.”
One thing that encouraged the leaders of the trip was the heavy participation by youth.
“I thought that the work there was great because we had people working in a lot of different areas and bringing people to Christ,” said MBC Partnership Missions Director Norm Howell. “I was very encouraged by the work that our MBC churches did and it made me excited to see God using Missouri youth and our churches in a place like Denver.”
Howell emphasized that the MBC needs to keep moving in a direction of partnership with Colorado churches. He said there are another 35-40 churches in Missouri that are going to work in other areas of Colorado.
A vision trip to Colorado is planned for Nov. 13-17. Cost is $400-$500. On a trip like this, good things happen, Krueger said.
“It really has been a while since I have done a real ministries mission trip,” he said. “I was knocking on doors and witnessing to people and I kind of needed that for myself. Hopefully we reached a significant amount of people in their community.”
For more information about upcoming trips to Colorado, visit the MBC website at www.mobaptist.org or contact Howell at 1-800-736-6227 ext. 620 or Linda Stockton at ext. 621. (John Inman is a junior journalism major at Lincoln University in Jefferson City and is a summer intern with The Pathway.)