JEFFERSON CITY — The first in-depth tour of Missouri for the purpose of ministry by Missouri Baptist Convention (MBC) Evangelism/Discipleship Strategist Mark Snowden Sept. 14-19 produced a greater level of awareness of a new synergy
among MBC outreach teams.
Rick Hedger, who is over the MBC missional evangelism/ discipleship team while also serving as partnership missions strategist, explained it this way.
“It’s rethinking evangelism,” Hedger said. “I use the term evangelistic discipleship or discipling evangelism. Whichever way, you can’t distinguish the two. There may be two sides to it, but it’s all one coin.”
Snowden traveled to Springfield to work with 75 Missouri Baptist church planters and their wives on Bible Storying. The goal was to get each planter to evangelize at the worldview level of specific people.
“I think they got the clear message that Bible Storying is reproducible and sustainable for making disciple-makers from even the earliest beginnings of a new start-up,” Snowden said.
He then went to Freshwater Church in Bolivar for TruthSticks Training. Sixty participants from 18 churches came to explore disciple-making using Bible stories. It is a method where the lost can be led to Christ and nurtured toward winning and discipling others in their own networks of relationships.
“Rather than use a lecture style, Freshwater’s worship center was transformed into an interactive environment featuring five different learning zones,” Snowden said. “Right away everyone discovered that they were responsible for learning, not me. We prayed for the Holy Spirit to guide us, and He did!”
Snowden then spoke at the Southwest Baptist University Global Connections week to about 1,000 students attending a special chapel service. Those students were introduced to a Bible story that they could tell to someone else.
“I was able to discuss international, national and local missions experiences in which God was already at work, and invited believers to carry the gospel message,” Snowden said.