Covenant Pastor Bert Welch gets a geography lesson from Dr. Ellen Tam of Macau, China, and Marina Kuzmina of Siberia.Covenant Baptist Church, Lancaster, recently reached a missions milestone by commissioning its 100th mission team. Since Covenant’s beginning in October 1994, members have participated in 58 mission trips to 18 countries and 43 mission trips to 17 states.
“From Macau to Mississippi and West Virginia to West Africa – we have shared God’s love with thousands of people,” states Bert Welch, Covenant’s founding pastor.
“Our first mission trip was an eight-man construction project to Syracuse, N.Y., in early 1995, and we just sent our 100th mission team to Ocean Springs, Miss. for a medical mission trip in February. We actually missed the opportunity to recognize the milestone because it has become so common to commission groups that slipped up on us, and before we knew it, off went mission group number 101 to Charleston last week.”
Welch added, “The greatness of a church should be based on her sending capacity, not her seating capacity. We are not in the church growth business; our focus is squarely on kingdom growth. Our church purpose statement clearly says that Covenant Baptist exists to “develop kingdom-hearted believers.”
In addition to sending out teams, Covenant Baptist has contributed more than $1.4 million to mission causes in the last decade through Southern Baptist avenues and partnerships.
“We are so humbled and thankful that God has enabled and empowered us to join him in his work is so many ways. We certainly could not have reached this significant point without God’s voice calling his people to move out beyond their comfort zones and go to where the people live,” Welch added.
These mission excursions are in addition to the many ongoing ministries Covenant people do locally. For example, Covenant sponsors a free weekly medical clinic; English-as-a-Second Language classes twice a week; and Covenant Auto Ministry, which offers free repairs to widows, singles mothers and families with needs. CAM has also donated several automobiles to families in need of reliable transportation. In addition, a Kingdom Builder team does home repairs and constructs wheelchair ramps for those in the community. The church also has long-term partnerships with a homeless shelter, a pregnancy care center, and two food and clothing ministries.
Covenant also has an Adopt-a-Doc project that brings young Christian Chinese physicians to Lancaster for an extended stay for enhanced medical education and exposure to the church culture in America. On a Saturday each spring, hundreds of Covenant members fan out across Lancaster County to complete various work projects during their annual Operation-in-as-Much Day.
All of these efforts locally and globally are focused on growing the kingdom of God. Welch adds, “We are fully aware that we may never see the fruit of our labors, but we continue to plant the gospel seeds and are confident that God will send others to water and reap the harvest.”
“Covenant Baptist Church has high expectations of its members to be actively involved in some aspect of mission work. If we are indeed the hands and feet of Jesus, then we must go and encounter people where they are and not be content with our ‘holy huddles’ on Sunday morning,” Welch said. “The real kingdom challenge lies beyond the walls of our church.”
Richard Steele, the church’s global mission team coordinator, said, “The whole idea of missions at Covenant has been, is, and always will be a hands-on situation that involves the ‘wee ones’ through senior adults. Missions begins at home, but impacting the ends of the earth is our aim.”