Two couples with ties to the host church and two couples who were being appointed to places of ministry in South Carolina were among 125 missionaries commissioned Feb. 24 by the North American Mission Board at First Baptist Church, Taylors.
“You are a missions-giving church; you are a missions-sending church; you are a missions-praying church, and we want to thank the Lord so much for that,” NAMB president Geoff Hammond commended the members of Taylors First, where current Southern Baptist Convention president, Frank Page, is senior pastor.
Bill and Susan Lutz are serving in North Charleston, where he is an Army chaplain.
Chris and Susan Barnes serve in South Dakota, where he is a church planter, and she is a children’s ministry director.Chris and Susan Barnes, members of the Taylors congregation, are serving in the eastern Dakotas; and Bill and Susan Lutz, also members of the Taylors congregation, are ministering to military troops and their families in North Charleston. Barnes assists area missionaries in planning strategies for starting new churches, and Susan is the children’s ministry director at a church in Sioux Falls, S.D. Lutz is awaiting assignment as a chaplain with the United States Army.
Serving in South Carolina are Loren and Sheila Aderhold, who will begin ministering to military troops and their families at Fort Jackson when he arrives for training as a military chaplain this June, and Jeff and Gail Lingerfelt, who are working with political leaders in Columbia. As the state director for Capitol Ministries, Lingerfelt’s strategy is to place a full-time disciple-maker in each of the 50 state capitols and in Washington D.C.
Newly commissioned NAMB missionaries and chaplains were also deployed to 28 other states, Puerto Rico, and British Columbia, Canada. The 125 new missionaries brings the total NAMB career missionaries and Missions Service Corps volunteers count to 5,271.
Commissioning celebrations are held in local churches because “the North American Mission Board gets to send missionaries on behalf of all the 46,000 Southern Baptist churches all over North America,” Hammond said. “So, it is fitting that we come today saying that we are doing this on behalf of the local church.”
Preaching from John 9:4, Hammond noted that “sent” is a key word in John’s gospel, for it appears more than 40 times. “I want you to see this as a great invitation to be a part of the work of God our Father on this earth, and understand that we are called to work the works of the Father,” he said.
In the missionaries being appointed, members of First Taylors were seeing “living pictures” of people who were giving their lives to the Great Commission, Hammond said. Yet, he underscored that members of the local church are “still, as followers of Jesus Christ, committed, appointed and sent to be about the task that Jesus gave us.”
“We need in our churches in the Southern Baptist Convention a renewed interest and resurgence of the Great Commission. We’ve got to get back to what the task is,” Hammond declared. “We have to understand that we have been sent by the Father,” he urged. “We have been sent in order to take the good news of Jesus Christ not only to the nations, but also to our neighbors.”
Jeff and Gail Lingerfelt are serving in Columbia, where he directs Capitol Ministries.
John and Diane Worcester, among the missionaries who will be serving in 28 states and Canada, will be church planters in San Diego, Calif., a metropolitan area of more than 5 million people. Video of missionaries introducing themselves.