JEFFERSON CITY – Browsing through The Pathway’s pages reveals an array of news and feature stories – close-up looks at the people and churches in the Missouri Baptist Convention who impart a witness for Christ in communities across the state.
Some examples of stories covered during the newspaper’s two decades in print are compiled below. To subscribe at no cost to the print edition of The Pathway, which is funded by the Cooperative Program, click here.
Ukraine
In the week after Russia invaded Ukraine, Ridgecrest Baptist Church in Springfield raised $56,000 to aid the ministry of an orphanage from which church members had adopted nearly a dozen children. “Many of these kids (at the orphanage) we hope someday will be here in Springfield and be in our homes,” said pastor Jeremy Muniz, who traveled to Poland with three other church members to visit with children evacuated from the orphanage in early March.
Concord Baptist Church in Jefferson City, meanwhile, raised $17,650 in two days to aid a camp in the village of Buzivka, which worship pastor Brad Newbold said had “swollen to twice its normal size due to people fleeing the cities.” In traveling there in 2018, Newbold began to develop a close relationship with Daniel Olynik, worship director for the Baptist Union of Ukraine and worship leader at Buzivka Baptist Church.
COVID-19
Preaching an online Palm Sunday service in the early days of the COVID-19 pandemic, Kenny Sims, pastor of Raintree Church in Hillsboro, felt it was “one of the worst sermons I’ve ever done.” That day, however, he received a text message from a young man named Deric who had heard Sims’ Facebook Live sermon, sensed God’s conviction, picked up his phone and texted Sims that “I need Jesus and I want to be baptized.” And on Easter Sunday, Deric’s baptism was celebrated in Raintree’s online service, which “humbles me,” Sims said, because it was “another way of God saying, ‘… As long as your heart is in the right place, I’ve got this.’”
Across Missouri, Baptists shared God’s love with their COVID-19-shuttered communities. First Baptist in Ashgrove, for example, left gift bags on the doorsteps of senior adults containing a note from the ministry staff, letters from children at the church, devotional books, crossword puzzle books and snacks. “We’ve been really trying to keep up the spirits of our older adults,” pastor Kevin Baker said, noting their need for connection with other people. “We’ve had a chance to actually talk with people about their faith,” he added, “and about where they put their hope.” Meanwhile, former Hannibal-LaGrange University music professor John Francis, who blogs at www.biblicaltrumpets.com, took to Facebook with a daily trumpet rendition of such hymns as “It Is Well,” “To God Be the Glory,” “Victory in Jesus” and “This Is My Father’s World.”
Among numerous COVID-19 food ministries: First Baptist in Scott City hosted a drive-through pizza party for the community, funded by a church member who owns several local businesses. About 20 First Baptist volunteers – all wearing masks and practicing social distancing – handed out 300 pizzas for several hours straight. Information about the church was attached to each box, noting that the church was ready to help out in any way they could. Pizzas also were sent to the police and fire stations, EMTs and two assisted living facilities. Meanwhile, First Baptist Church’s IMPACT Ministry in Blue Springs – one of nearly 70 hunger ministries funded in part through the Missouri Baptist Convention – saw hundreds line up at their I-70 campus for drive-through grocery distribution, while Connection Point Church in Raytown distributed groceries and toilet paper to 80-100 families a week.
Sanctity of life
Take your sanctity of life views to the voting booth, Susan Klein, executive director of Missouri Right to Life, told Pathway readers in May, even if Roe v. Wade is overturned by the U.S. Supreme Court, making abortion regulations a state-by-state matter. Stay informed about each candidate’s stance on abortion, Klein advised. “The abortion industry and their supporters will be sending money into Missouri to try to get pro-abortion candidates elected,” she reminded. “We must be prepared to counter them by putting out the truth about where all candidates stand on life.”
Church renewal
Having dwindled to eight members who considered closing the church doors, Mt. Nebo Baptist near Lockwood now has more than 60 in worship. “To see the joy on the faces of the older people is all the payment a guy would need,” said Rick Sharp, who came as pastor in October 2021. Among the keys to growth: “God told me a while back not to act like I don’t have problems or that I’m more spiritual,” he said, while helping folks realize that “being friendly means not just to those already here, but to those new people, whom they treat as gold when they get here.” Mt. Nebo started a children’s church drawing between 12 and 20 young ones and has added four new adult Sunday School classes. “For the most part, the new people coming to church weren’t involved with other churches,” Sharp said. “I don’t want to build a church by taking cars from one church parking lot to another.”
Evangelism
Judy Boen, who moved from St. Louis to Florida with her husband to take jobs with NASA, told of a brief moment with astronaut Roger Chaffee in 1967 when she was a secretary at the space agency.
Boen was working after hours on materials for her church’s evangelism efforts when Chaffee walked in and asked, “Oh, what church do you go to?” She told him which church, “and that was the closest we ever got to talking about spiritual things. I was 24 and even though (the astronauts) liked me, I was a little intimidated.”
Two days later, Chaffee and two other Apollo I crew members were killed while conducting tests in their command module on the launch pad.
“It hit me,” she said. “Judy Boen, you have been a Christian since you were 12 years old,’ I could hear God saying. ‘You’d better learn to share your faith.’ God gave me a perfect opportunity to share one-on-one with a man He knew was going to die … and all I could talk about was church.” The experience prompted her to begin learning how to share her faith by listening to sermons by a local Baptist pastor and the late Adrian Rogers, longtime pastor of the Memphis-area Bellevue Baptist Church.
Disaster Relief
Orchard Farm Baptist Church’s involvement in its community intensified when the Mississippi and Missouri rivers flooded in 2019, prompting the St. Charles congregation to begin hosting Friday night fellowships, with more than 100 showing up for the first gathering. “It lets people have a sense of normalcy since many were either stuck at relatives’ houses or at a hotel with all the challenges that kind of living brings,” said Michael Bowen, the church’s pastor at the time. “Having a couple of hours away … allows them to play some games, watch a movie, and talk to other people in the same situation.” The church also hosted a disaster recovery clinic – how to clean up, how to navigate the bureaucracy and paperwork – taught by Missouri Baptist Disaster Relief regional coordinator Toby Tucker.
And volunteers sat down and listened to survivors’ stories and frustrations, often leading into gospel conversations. As a result, at least two people trusted Jesus as their Savior and were baptized. A message received by the church recounted that “before the flood, we [had] never even heard of Orchard Farm Baptist Church, but we have heard so many great stories about how you have helped people both with food and supplies, and with giving them hope, that now when we hear ‘Orchard Farm Baptist Church’ what we hear is love.”
Cultural issues
Don’t confuse The Walt Disney Hometown Museum in Marceline with the LGBTQ+ corporate agenda of The Walt Disney Company, said Brian Baker, pastor of First Baptist Church and a member of the city council. The museum is not owned by the entertainment giant, he pointed out, and local Christians have “serious disappointment in the stances that the Disney corporation has taken.”
“The Walt Disney Hometown Museum is a real gem,” Baker said. “It is an engine of our tourism industry here and attracts a steady stream of visitors, really devoted Disney fans from all over the world, every year. Its collection is only getting larger, and so is its fan base. So it is a gift to our community, and quite important in many ways to maintaining our community’s identity.” Disney’s family moved to Marceline in 1906 when he was 5 and lived there until moving to Kansas City in 1911. The rural community is where Disney developed an interest in drawing, being paid to draw a retired doctor’s horse.
Families should pay attention to Disney programming and other media they watch, Baker stated. “We just have to have a much clearer set of eyes about what we’re letting children watch and be willing to have open discussion about the things that we see.” Yet Southern Baptists shouldn’t stop caring for individuals in the LGBTQ+ community who need the gospel, he said. “Even in a small town like Marceline, more and more of them are friends and neighbors. And this is something of a litmus test for us, to determine what kind of neighbors we will be to them, while we stand uncompromisingly on the truth of God’s Word.” Despite their sins, LGBTQ+ individuals have been created in the image of God, Baker said, “and God’s love for them, just like God’s love for us, looks like Calvary.”