Sharing the Gospel on university campuses in a country largely closed to Christianity, working with church planters in a remote area of Canada and researching Japanese immigrants in Argentina were among the ministries conducted on mission trips this summer by teams from The Southern Baptist Theological Seminary.
Through late-July, five mission trips coordinated by the seminary’s Great Commission Center have taken students and faculty to three continents. The trips have gone to East Asia; Argentina; Quebec, Canada; Newfoundland, Canada; and South Asia.
“The Great Commission Center wants to involve every student and every professor in intercultural missions, both overseas as well as among immigrants in the USA,” said David Sills, director of Southern’s Great Commission Center and associate professor of missions and cultural anthropology.
“Students and professors who have been on the field, have seen the needs of the world and have a picture of how the Lord is working in other nations are able to bring that perspective back to the classroom and their ministries.”
Sills led a team of nine Southern students July 1-14 to conduct research on how to reach Japanese people living in Buenos Aires, Argentina. After a week of class instruction on how to conduct ethnographic research, the group surveyed the Japanese population.
“We interviewed Japanese Christians, Buddhist business owners, Shinto immigrants and tried to find out how assimilated they have become into the culture of Buenos Aires,” he said. “We wanted to know what religion they practice, whether they speak Spanish or Japanese in the home, who makes decision among them and whether the second and third generations still see themselves as Japanese or Latin Americans.
“All of these things impact the way the IMB (International Mission Board of the Southern Baptist Convention) will communicate the Gospel and where the personnel resources will be focused.”
The trip gave students an opportunity to realize that academic research on unreached people groups plays a vital practical role in reaching the world for Christ, Sills said.
“More than one of them remarked that it would be impossible to be an effective missionary without studying the culture first,” he said of the students. “I can say that in class, and they may write it down and believe me, but it takes on greater significance when they see it firsthand.”
Wendy Jones, a master of divinity student from Abbesville, S.C., was one of the students who became convinced of the value cultural research holds for missions.
“One of the IMB missionaries we worked with mentioned that if he had the kind of information we collected when he began his work, it would have been invaluable for his ministry strategy,” Jones said. “As we think of the future missionaries for the Japanese-Argentine, our prayer is that the material we put together will aid in the development of an effective strategy for reaching them for Christ.”
In a trip to Gaspe, Quebec, Canada, June 24-30, a team of five Southern students and one professor worked with a church-starting strategist from the Canadian Convention of Southern Baptists to prayer walk, share the Gospel and encourage a family of church planters.
Trip leader J.D. Payne said there was at least one significant victory on the trip when his team showed a discouraged church planter how he could partner with other Baptists to improve the effectiveness of his work. Payne serves as assistant professor of church planting and evangelism at Southern.
“When we arrived, this family had been doing evangelism in their community but were discouraged and felt alone in their efforts,” Payne said. “After our team stayed in their home for several days, encouraged them, assisted them with outreach and shared with them the Southern Baptist strategy for evangelism and church multiplication throughout Quebec, they decided they wanted to partner with the Canadian Convention of Southern Baptists to reach their people with the Gospel.”
Jared Penner, a master of divinity student from Abbotsford, British Columbia, said encouraging the church planter and his family helped the family decide to stay at their ministry post rather than move away.
“For me, the greatest highlight was doing chores and projects around their house to love them and serve them,” Penner said. “They were so overwhelmed and appreciative of it all. To share meals and times of prayer with them, along with a generous gift of supermarket gift cards and some money, was such a joy.”
The Newfoundland, Canada, team, which was also led by Payne, worked July 15-21 with the first Southern Baptist missionaries ever to serve in Newfoundland. The team, made up of 18 Southern students and faculty members, encouraged the missionaries and shared the Gospel with lost Newfoundlanders.
The team also put on a Christian concert in the garage of a couple living in Ferryland, Newfoundland.
“Though our team was few in number, it was quite possibly the largest number of believers to gather in a home in this community,” Payne said, noting that in the Ferryland region of Newfoundland there is only one Protestant church for approximately 13,000 people.
The team in East Asia shared the Gospel on seven college campuses June 3-23 through activities such as basketball, English classes and engaging people on the streets. The group of nine Southern students shared the message of Christ with at least 100 people individually and saw at least three people trust Christ as Lord and Savior. They were able to spend a large amount of time discipling each of the new believers and helped them get connected to a local church.
“It was just an exciting time where the entire three weeks we were there, we spent time with different people three or four times a day sharing the Gospel in each different encounter,” said Will Brooks, leader of the trip and a master of divinity student from Columbia, S.C.
Brooks, a former journeyman in East Asia with the IMB, added, “People would be really, really proud of the way the team shared the Gospel while we were there because they just made it a very biblical, very Christ-centered, Word-centered sharing of the Gospel.”
Jessica Vaughn, a Boyce College student from Tuscaloosa, Ala., was present when one Asian woman committed her life to Christ and was able to begin discipling the woman through several additional meetings.
“Since we were there for three weeks, we were able
to meet with her and her friend, who also believed, for about four more times teaching them how to study Scripture on their own, just beginning to disciple them,” Vaughn said.
Sills said that all the trips represented a valuable opportunity for Southern students to work with IMB missionaries and see how Southern Baptists partner to spread the Gospel to every area of the globe.
“I appreciate the opportunity that we have to cooperate in the work of our Southern Baptist missionaries all around the world by encouraging them with ministry and prayer support from Southern Seminary while also raising awareness of the opportunities for our students to serve internationally when they complete their education,” Sills said.
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