Christ’s church is world wide and it is a joy to be able to share in its mission by learning about - and supporting - the work of God’s kingdom elsewhere. We try - not wholly successfully - to keep some sort of tab on the range of missions etc which our members support as individuals. It probably runs into three figures. All we can record on a web page is something of our corporate commitment as a body of God’s people.
Baptist Missions
We give priority to supporting the missions of our own Baptist family
BMS World Mission (www.bmsworldmission.org) supports Christian work in more than forty countries, increasingly by working alongside local indigenous churches and projects. We have a particular link with the Wilson family who have served with BMS World Mission for many years in the arid north east of Brazil. Mike is an agricultural specialist who has been helping local people develop ways of sustaining a reasonable standard of living out of a hostile environment. Daveen has worked as an evangelist and teacher. They have established a church at Trapia and are currently helping a group of young Christians develop in the faith to the point where they can take on leadership of the community.
Baptist Home Mission is part of the Baptist Union and its exists to help all Baptist churches in England and Wales to share in mission within our own shores. Alongside many other fellowships, we give financial support to help fund ministry in strategic situations such as new housing projects and inner cities; to fund chaplaincies in industry and education; and to maintain a national infrastructure of pastoral oversight and administration. (www.baptist.org.uk/home_mission/index.html)
Baptists in Russia
A number of members give small but regular financial support to the pastor of a Baptist church in a large town outside Moscow.
The Struggle for Justice
Like many other churches, we have been increasingly challenged to understand that if mission is about bringing the life and love of God into the world, it cannot be just about people’s souls and life after death - it is also about the quality of life in this world. As Christian Aid put it : We believe in life before death.
There are three main strands to our activity
Fairtrade(www.fairtrade.org.uk) We seek to use fairly traded goods as much as we can in our church life and encourage our members to do so in their own families. For a time we had a Fairtrade stall in our church after Sunday worship - but now we prefer to badger local supermarkets to stock what we need!
Aid Agencies We are firm supporters of Christian organisations such as Christian Aid (www.christian-aid.org.uk) and Tearfund (www.tearfund.org) in their work to bring relief to emergency situations and to encourage long term development in the most impoverished parts of our world.
Campaigning for Justice We increasingly recognise that we have a prophetic call to join with those who are challenging the fundamental injustices of global economic and trade structures which ensure that nothing is really done to threaten the wealth and power of the first world. For many of us, the starting point on this journey was participation in the demonstration in Birmingham in 1998 when a million people joined the human chain round the city centre to call for the cancellation of debt and a Jubilee for the world’s poor. We work and pray to make poverty history.
Human Rights: the right to be human
English Baptists are rightly proud of the story of Thomas Helwys, who originated in Broxtowe, Nottinghamshire. He led a Baptist group which fled to Holland but then returned to face the music. In 1612 he published a little book A Short Declaration of the Mistery of Iniquity, the first demand ever published in England for universal religious liberty, for freedom of conscience for all. In his view, no state had the right to interfere in a person’s relationship with his Creator - that was a matter of private conscience, between the person and God. Not surprisingly, he was arrested and by 1616 he was dead. Freedom came at a price.
We seek to stand alongside those who suffer under the scourge of persecution and torture. As a church we belong to Amnesty UK (www.amnesty.org.uk), indicating our belief that freedom is indivisible and that if we want freedom of speech and conscience for Christians, we must also be committed to it for those of other beliefs.
We are also concerned to stand alongside our Christian brothers and sisters who suffer for their faith and thus support the work of organisations such as Open Doors (http://sb.od.org) which campaigns on their behalf and seeks to bring spiritual and material support to them.
Saving the Planet
We share with many a recognition that we cannot go on plundering our beautiful planet Earth, the Creator God’s gift to us. We all have a responsibility for the way we use our wealth and resources. As a church, we support the work of A Rocha (http://en.rocha.org/uk), a Christian organisation which engages in environmental projects as a way of creating and restoring communities. One of our members is currently acting as a regional representative.
Supporting Missions
What does it mean for a church to “support” these organisations which are working on our behalf?
We give financial support
We are committed to giving away at least 20% of our church income. The first call on this is the Baptist organisations, who rely totally on Baptists for their existence. But we also contribute to other organisations routinely or through special offerings. And we support those involved in mission in our own church.
We pray
We regularly turn one of our monthly church prayer meetings over to missions and remember especially the work and well being of those with whom we have personal links.
We try to be informed
In our Sunday worship, we have an occasional Window on the World, in which we highlight an aspect of mission and make it a focus for intercessory prayer. And of course, we observe traditional events such as Harvest when we highlight the work of one of the aid agencies.
We campaign
We will from time to time encourage members to take part in one of the aid agencies, regular post card campaigns designed to keep politicians on their toes and to remind them that we are watching!
But there’s more to it than that:- the challenge to be a Sending Church
Increasingly, we seek to accept the challenge not only to be a church that supports missions, but also to be a sending church.
It seemed to us that God immediately confirmed this commitment when one of our own members went forward for ministerial training within the UK.
We already have in our congregation a number of people who have followed Christ’s call to take his gospel and love into other societies, some long term, others for short periods:
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Bangladesh
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Bosnia
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Indonesia
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Nepal
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Romania
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Zimbabwe
In recent years, a number of our young people have spent periods on short term service
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Brazil
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Moldova
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Philippines
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Uganda
From a base in this country one of our members is currently involved in work in Africa