JEFFERSON CITY—Missouri Baptist Convention (MBC) Partnership Missions Specialist Rick Hedger said he feels “very good” about the foundation that has been built in the Western Gateway Cluster of the Sub-Saharan Affinity Group of eight West African nations.
Four Missouri Baptist churches are involved as engaging churches, where they are directly serving as missionaries to a people group. Others are involved on a level where they are helping existing International Mission Board (IMB) missionaries. Part of Hedger’s role right now is to create “possibility thinking.”
For example, he is well aware that many Missouri Baptist churches are thinking that they could never be a part of going to West Africa.
“I’m a small church, I run 50, I run 75, there’s no way we can do that,” Hedger said, identifying the thinking pattern. “So I just dismiss it from my mind.”
However, possibility thinking can change all of that. It can see the engaging church and ask a key question or two about the engaging church’s strategy. That is how more Missouri Baptist churches that are currently sitting on the sidelines could wind up getting involved in 2012, Hedger said.
The simple idea that Hedger is trying to promote is that engaging churches need partners. The question these prospective churches can ask is, “Could we go one time a year?” That type of help right now is needed, Hedger said.
Hedger is the former pastor of Calvary Baptist Church, Neosho, who from 2002-2007 led that congregation from being a partnering (helping) church to being an engaging (acting as the missionary to an unreached people group) church. He said he recently read a statistic in Frontier magazine that encouraged him.
“Africa is well on the way to being the first continent that has every unengaged people engaged,” he said. “This process that was put in place back in 2005 by IMB has just been covering the entire continent of Africa. Our partnership is in one area with eight countries, but there are so many doing this.
“In 2005 there was one church as an engaging church. Now there are like 155 churches who are engaging churches the last I read. It’s a good thing. The beachhead is there. The progress is being made, but you always need reinforcements.”
On Jan. 27-28, a Base Camp conference will be held at Concord Baptist Church in Jefferson City. Hedger said churches who are wondering how to get involved with West Africa can come to this event and learn.
Base Camp 1 will focus on pre-entry evangelism and how witnessing can take place in an oral, African community. In Base Camp 2, participants will learn how to disciple someone when a Bible in their language is not available. A lot of these methods in these camps revolve around the concept of oral storytelling.
“This training will give them some basic tools on how they can begin this process,” Hedger said.
To register as a group or individually for the Jan. 27-28 conference, go online to mobaptist.org/partnership_missions and click on the registration tab.
To inquire about the West Africa partnership email Hedger at rhedger@mobaptist.org or phone his assistant Linda Stockton at (800) 736-6227, ext. 621.
ALLEN PALMERI/associate editor
apalmeri@mobaptist.org