Being and sending missionaries was the emphasis for the recent 2012 South Carolina Baptist Conference of the Deaf at White Oak Conference Center, where participants voted unanimously to adopt the deaf peoples of South Asia. A South Carolina couple is among the first to serve in church-planting among the deaf in New Delhi.
Cameron House shares testimonies of his experiences working among the deaf, while Vesta Sauter interprets.Vesta Sauter, who, with her husband Mark is a deaf-affinity strategy leader for the International Mission Board, said, “Deaf pastors and leaders serving in South Carolina realize that this adoption is a God-sized task. They are looking forward to undergirding the efforts of the IMB deaf-affinity missionaries living in South Asia.” Danny and Kelly Rupp (names used here are pseudonyms) are the first deaf South Carolina Baptists to serve with the IMB.
According to Sauter, there are more than 7 million deaf people in India, Bangladesh and Nepal, and South Asia includes the largest number of deaf unreached people in the world. An unreached people group is one defined by less than 2 percent of the population knowing Jesus as Savior.
Tim Rice, interim missions mobilization director for the South Carolina Baptist Convention, said the partnership will begin to take shape when IMB representatives meet with SCBCD leaders on Sept. 15 to “discuss and dream.”
“As soon as we can, we’d like to send a team from SCBCD to Delhi, where our current state partnership exists,” Rice said. “SCBC churches have been praying and going to South Asia since 2005, and we are engaged in Delhi now. I believe God has led us and put all of this together for such a time as this.”
More than 100 adults and young people attended this year’s conference, which included speakers Donnie Wiltshire, senior consultant for special ministries for the Baptist Convention of North Carolina; Sauter, of IMB; Cameron and Meghann House, deaf missionary mobilizers serving in East Asia; and Rice. Sauter and the Houses shared devotionals, encouraging participants to, as Sauter said, “send out our members into the community and share testimonies as ‘missionaries’ – not just inviting people to attend church.”
Wiltshire said that “we often make decisions excluding Jesus, thinking we know what to do on our own, when we should be right behind Jesus.” He also shared a history of deaf missionaries that led to the formation of the Southern Baptist Conference of the Deaf in 1948 by the Home Mission Board (now North American Mission Board).
Rice spoke on missions partnerships. That message led to lunch discussions with SCBCD board members about adopting the unreached deaf population of South Asia. At its business meeting, the SCBCD approved the partnership, which Rice and Sauter called “historic.”
Paul May, SCBCD first vice president, said South Carolina Baptist Conference of the Deaf was founded in the mid-1950s. The organization officially incorporated in 2008 with a mission to produce, train and empower deaf disciples, and to train and encourage interpreters so that the deaf and hearing are united as one body. SCBCD is available to provide cultural and leadership training for churches to empower deaf people to run their ministries or transform into a church within a church. Also, SCBCD recently added an interpreter coordinator on its executive board, giving the ability to provide workshops to encourage many current signers to function as interpreters at churches.
There are approximately 45 deaf ministries in South Carolina churches. An estimated 46,000 of South Carolina’s 4.6 million people are hearing-impaired. SCBCD is working to build a database of those individuals toward a goal of including them in the organization. – SCBC