As I walk down the street today, I can hear the call to prayer ringing through the neighborhood in an unnamed city in North Africa. A cashier from a stand serving snacks excuses himself and places his rug toward Mecca and begins his ritualistic prayer. A college student turns down his radio out of respect. A father and son roam into the nearby mosque. But a group of students walking with backpacks prays in the streets with eyes wide open. We were sent by South Carolina Baptists.
I am with South Carolina college students funded by the Cooperative Program who are meeting new Muslim college friends eager to spend time with English-speaking natives. They will hear the gospel for the first time. We are assisting a full-time worker who has been here for a few decades. We are working alongside a former South Carolina student who spent the summer here. She, her husband and their newborn finish a three-year assignment and are preparing for a career as workers. They were raised up by South Carolina churches, mobilized by state workers, educated at our schools, and surrounded by infrastructure all funded by the Cooperative Program. All of this was made possible because a collection of churches made financial sacrifices to join other churches who cooperate together to support them.
Southern Baptist churches will gather in Indianapolis in a few weeks to hold the rope for them. Unfortunately, not everyone present will have the workers we support on their minds. For them, it may be easy to reduce funding to the Cooperative Program to protest a decision that didn’t go their way or to reallocate to work at home.
However, there will be others who can’t get the workers off their minds or those far from God off their hearts. They will vote with their names and faces etched in their minds who are deployed all over the world and work with people who have limited to no access to the gospel. Their vote and presence at the annual meeting sends a signal that the work will not end on their watch. The workers will not have to come home, future pastors will continue to be educated, and pipelines for future workers will expand.
The workers we send are worthy of our investment. They deserve for us to rally around why we began cooperating in the first place. Their sacrifice should be reciprocated by our sacrifice at home. Let’s give them our best and keep racing toward the finish line. See you at the pole in Indianapolis.
Lee Clamp is associate executive director-treasurer for the South Carolina Baptist Convention.