Posts By :

admin

Promotional Guide For World Missions Day

 150 150 admin
By:
0

BMA Missions is thankful for your partnership. Together we see God blessing with more missionaries in more countries making more disciples and planting more churches than ever before. World Missions Day is February 27, 2022, and we are hoping it is an impactful day at your church. Here are some ideas to help you prepare.

PLAN YOUR WORLD MISSIONS DAY EVENT

World Missions Day is an opportunity to rally your church around the purpose for which we exist – to fulfill the Great Commission. During your World Missions Day celebration please include:

  • a reminder that we have a Great Commission mandate both locally and globally
  • a celebration of how your partnership with BMA Missions is changing lives around the world
  • a time of prayer for our missionaries and missions efforts around the world
  • a chance to give to The Jerry Kidd Offering, which goes to supports the continued efforts of furthering the gospel

RESOURCES

To assist in preparing for your event, the following resources are available to every church:

  • Printed materials – donation envelopes, bulletin inserts, and posters
  • Video, digital and printable resources that includes promotional videos, logos, and images
  • Apparel – BMA shirt for every pastor who registers and T-shirts available for purchase
  • Guest speaker – Invite someone from BMA Missions to speak to your church.

Contact Sidney Vines – Items available at www.bmamissions.org/worldmissionsday or contact Sidney Vines (sidney@bmaam.com, 501-358-3848).

PROMOTIONAL IDEAS

Here are some ways to plan ahead, create awareness, generate excitement, and engage people.

  • Set and promote an offering goal for your church through bulletins, announcements, social media platforms, etc. and provide donation envelopes in bulletins, foyers, pews, and classrooms.
  • Create a missions board in high traffic areas with verses, printed materials, missionary pictures, offering goals, etc.
  • Create visibility by hanging posters in high traffic areas and using logos (available for download) in your bulletins, worship visuals, websites, social media, and other printed materials.
  • Distribute bulletin inserts, play promotional videos, and ask your pastor to reference them in services.
  • Present a missions sermon series that culminates on World Missions Day.
  • Incorporate music and songs with a missions theme to compliment your missions emphasis.
  • Contact Sidney to invite a BMA Missions staff member to speak at your church.
  • Promote a week or month of prayer using prayer guide handouts, emails, or social media to guide daily prayer.
  • Have small groups/classes research a country or missionary for a presentation (info on bmaamissions.org)
  • Use quotes or testimonials from church members who participate in or have a special heart for missions.

PRAYER GUIDE IDEAS

  • For evangelism and discipleship to take root in our churches
  • For pastors as they lead our churches during this difficult time in our country
  • For BMA Missions leaders who train, support, and invest in missionaries and missions efforts around the world
  • For North American church planters, which includes U.S., Hispanic, Arabic, and other non-English speaking church plants as well as chaplains ministering to our military personnel
  • For U.S. missionaries overseas that they will be effective in making disciples and raising leaders to carry on the work in their own countries
  • For national ChangeMaker missionaries who are planting churches in their own countries
  • For God to call new missionaries and open doors to new countries and people groups
  • For the people affected by the challenges created by Covid-19 all around the world
  • For the increasing oppression of the gospel at home and abroad

More information on specific missionaries and countries can be found at bmaamissions.org.

World Missions Day 2022 Jerry Kidd Missions Offering • February 27, 2022

 150 150 admin
By:
0

Pastors: To find more information, register your church, and get a “Missions” T-shirt go to:

https://bmamissions.org/worldmissionsday/

Everyone: Read the following articles, and Promotional Guide as you prepare for this special day and Pray for our Missionaries!

January 2022

 150 150 admin
By:
0

Christian Founders of America

 150 150 admin
By:
0

Proverbs 1:7 “The fear of the Lord is the beginning of knowledge; but fools despise wisdom and instruction.”

by Dr.John Adams, Executive Dir. Moral Action

The blessing of wisdom is the blessing of God. The invitation of wisdom is the invitation of God. Many believe that God invited the early American founders overwhelmingly to raise Christ as the Leader of America.

That mindset was held by George Washington, John Adams, Daniel Webster, Benjamin Rush, Samuel and on and on.

The Bible

The American Frontier opened up between 1776 and 1850,American colonists first expanded out as far west as Appalachia, then pushed the frontier to the Mississippi River. By 1850, American pioneers pushed the edge of settlement to Texas, the Southwest, and the Pacific northwest,
seeking cheap land and inspired by the belief that they had a “manifest destiny” to stretch across the continent…The Patriot Bible. In 1835, Alexis de Tocqueville, a French historian, traveled America as it was coming is own as a nation. He wrote down his observations in Democracy in America. This classic book provides unique insights into what made America such a rapid success which he clearly believed to be Christianity and the Bible.

Education

In a great culmination of writings and historical opinions, American
schools, colleges, and universities loved the Word of God. Harvard University, founded in 1636 by the Puritans adopted the “Rules and Precepts” of the university that stated: “Let every student be plainly instructed and earnestly pressed to consider well, the main end of his study to wit to know God in Jesus Christ which is eternal life. John 17:3, “And this is life eternal, that they might know thee the only true God and Jesus Christ whom thou hast sent.” Most of America’s oldest universities were started by preachers and churches. Harvard, William and Mary. Yale, Princeton, King’s College, Brown, Rutgers, and Dartmouth were founded by Christian preachers and church affiliations. Yale College was established in 1701 with a stated goal that “every student shall consider the main end of his study to wit to know God in Jesus Christ and answerably to lead a godly, sober life.” William and Mary was founded in 1693 to supply the church of Virginia “with a seminary of ministers” that the Christian faith may be propagated.” Princeton had as one of its founding statements:
“Cursed is all leaning that is contrary to the Cross of Christ.”

To be open and correct, all the Founding Fathers of America were not Christians (true believers in Christ): they were not. But the Christian teachings from the Bible were great influences on the culture. Christ’s words had a profound effect on the homes, families and political leaders of
that day.

The Baptists sent out their “farmer-preachers.” As was true of the Mryhodistsk the Baptists developed systems that made it easy for committed lay people to enter the ministry and to be deployed quickly where the greatest opportunities were. Most of their preachers had little education and were poorly paid, but they were in touch with the pioneer’s lives.

With an emphasis for a personal conversion and salvation from sin through faith in Jesus Christ, these ministers spread the Gospel far and wide.

This conviction today that I attributed to Patrick Henry, Governor of Virginia is so needed today:

“It cannot be emphasized too clearly and too often that this nation was
founded, not by religionists, but by Christians; not on religion, but on the Gospel of Jesus Christ.”

World Missions Day 2022

 150 150 admin
By:
0

February 27, 2022

We live in a broken world full of broken people.
We know that.
We see that.
We say that.
Jesus did, too.

Matthew 9:36-38 says, “But when He saw the multitudes, He was moved with compassion for them, because they were weary and scattered, like sheep having no shepherd. Then He said to His disciples, the harvest truly is plentiful, but the laborers are few. Therefore pray the Lord of the harvest to send out laborers into His harvest.”

Jesus was moved with compassion for the broken. Missions happens when we are burdened for broken people. It was in our brokenness that Jesus found us, loved us, and saved us.

The story of missions is the story of people – missionaries – who are burdened for people, Burdened enough to go. Burdened enough to sacrifice their lives for the lives of others.

The harvest is plentiful, and we need laborers. But laborers are birthed out of a burdened and broken heart for the lost and weary and scattered.

Our vision and impact in reaching the world will never be bigger than our burden for broken people.

That’s the catalyst to missions.

That’s the heart of missionaries.

We indeed live in a broken world full of broken people, but does that “move us with compassion”?

May we be burdened for broken people during this World Missions Day season and every day.

A BROKEN HEART FOR A BROKEN WORLD

Pandemics • lock downs • Political divide • Poverty • Religious oppression • Persecution

We live in a BROKEN world

  • In a broken world, Jesus was burdened for broken people:
  • The impoverished and oppressed.
  • The helpless and hopeless
  • The lost and weary and scattered

Jesus gave his life for broken people. And He gave the same mission to the church. Take the healing message of Jesus Christ to the nations. We too must be burdened for people.

Each day, 175,000 people die. Each year 60 Million broken and lost people die.

For more information go to www.bmamissions.org

December 2021 – Mission Director’s Report

 150 150 admin
By:
0

Dear Churches of the BMAMO:

Merry Christmas, everybody! It has been a full year plus 2 months since I became your Missions Director and that time has been fruitful and positive in many ways. I could not be more excited about the ministry that Bro. Juan Fernandez and his family are carrying out and the fruit that they are seeing. I beg you to continue to pray and support Bro. Juan in any and every way the Lord leads.

On a State level, I am striving to encourage each church to do the BMAMO assessment and utilize the accompanying pamphlet so that the next time you perform the assessment, the church as a whole will score better and thereby increase their Missions knowledge. These articles over the next few months will lay out specifically the impetus behind the assessment questions and how to use the pamphlet to better prepare yourself for your next assessment. I am hearing positive things from the churches that have made use of the assessment and will be sharing that soon.

Most of us have heard the question, “What do you give someone that has everything?” As Americans, we don’t think of ourselves in that light, yet compared to 2/3 of the world we do have everything. We have comfortable homes, wardrobes to clothe ourselves, refrigerators and freezers full of food, cars, trucks, houses, and lands. You and I know there are lots of people that have more “stuff” than we do. But to get back to the question – what do you give someone that has everything? The answer is to give them something that they cannot provide for themselves. For every man, woman, boy, and girl, that is what Jesus did for us. He gave us the one thing we could never provide for ourselves – His precious salvation. This is why we call ourselves “Missionaries.” It is our mission to take this most wonderful gospel to the world, specifically to the people within your and my sphere of influence.

On a very practical level, I believe we can take the same ideology and ask, “What can I do for the people within my sphere of influence that they cannot do for themselves?” That’s the way you make your Christmas list and shed the light of the gospel in their lives. Some of those on your list will have physical needs, some will be spiritual, some will be time that you spend with them, and some will be financial gifts. I encourage you to ask yourself the question as you go about preparing to bless others with a gift.

Lastly, on a negative note, but also positive from the standpoint of potential healing and restoration, our Baptist Missionary Association President Justin Rhodes was relieved of his duties as Pastor of his church because of an unstated moral failure. This is public knowledge, I am told, and I got permission to share this before I included it in this article. You may not know Justin, but I do. This was a shock and a great disappointment. I have nothing but empathy, forgiveness, and love for Justin, and I’m asking you to pray for him, the church that he pastored, and the association, that God will bring healing, restoration, and forgiveness. I love the verse that says God will restore the years the locust have eaten. What Satan means for evil, God will use for good and for a lesson to all of us.

Let’s remember 1 Corinthians 10:12-13 “Wherefore let him that thinketh he standeth take heed lest he fall. There hath no temptation taken you but such as is common to man: but God is faithful, who will not suffer you to be tempted above that ye are able; but will with the temptation also make a way to escape, that ye may be able to bear it.”

May the Lord richly bless you this Christmas season.
Bro. Ben Kingston

Happy New Year!

 150 150 admin
By:
0

The fruit of having a Merry Christmas

We hear a lot about having a “Merry Christmas” as we enter this time of celebrating the birth of Jesus as He came to fulfill the plan of God for the redemption of mankind.

As we refresh our minds concerning God’s plan, love, wisdom, power, and glory we can’t miss having a “Merry” Christmas.

Being blessed by God as we are reminded of His wonderful characteristics of love, peace, joy, strength we are laying the foundation that permits us to have a Happy New Year!

A Happy New Year is the result of having a Merry Christmas. When we focus on the Word of God which enlightens us about the joy of The eternal One during Christmas we can look forward to a Happy New Year because whatever we experience in the year ahead will be faced with stronger faith and exciting confidence instead of dread and fear! God knows what we will face before we face it and prepares our hearts and minds to rely on His promises no matter what we face.

Luke reminds us of the attitude we should have as a result of the Good News the angel spoke about the birth of Jesus in Luke 2:10-11. “And the angel said unto them, Fear not; for, behold, I bring you good tidings of great joy, which shall be to all people. For unto you is born this day in the city of David a Saviour, which is Christ the Lord.”

The results of what the shepherds heard and saw are recorded in verse 20: “And the shepherds returned glorifying and praising God for all the things that they had heard and seen, as it was told unto them.” Look forward to a Happy New Year as a result of the blessings of Christmas!

November 2021 – Mission Director’s Report

 150 150 admin
By:
0

Dear BMA of Missouri Churches:

WOW, well, here we are! It is Thanksgiving and then Christmas season. But relax! According to the media, we won’t have Christmas this year because all the “stuff” that makes Christmas Christmas is out on shipping containers in the sea for one reason or another. So, we will not be able to have Christmas the way we are used to … wait for it … GOOD! Now, why would I say that? Because if those folks think that some $50 gadget is the sum total of Christmas, then they truly have allowed the commercialization of Christmas to blind them.

Dear Churches, Christmas has always been a little babe in a manger bringing God’s love to the world. And it still is!I am so glad that the love of Jesus is not dependent on the supply chain of America. (As someone posted on Facebook “Christmas isn’t stranded on ships in either ocean. God delivered Christmas over 2,000 years ago. JESUS CHRIST is Christmas!)
Some of you might be thinking, “Wait a minute, Bro. Ben, aren’t we getting ahead of ourselves? We have Thanksgiving first, don’t we? Yes, no doubt! But I wanted to highlight what the news is cramming down our throats because in their eyes, if we can’t have Christmas the way we are used to, why on earth would we have anything to be thankful for?

Let’s count, shall we? For the moment we still have a free country. We still have the freedom to worship the way we biblically see fit. We still have a representative government. We still have free elections. We can still move throughout the country with freedom. We can still own and sell property. Now, are many of these freedoms being threatened? Absolutely! But we should be thankful that we have them at this moment.

Let’s get personal. We should be thankful for our physical health, at whatever level. We have our families and their health, at whatever level. We have friends. We have our churches. We have the Gospel. We have the Bible. We have the Church we attend. We have our Sunday School or Small Groups class we attend. We have the transcendent cause of sharing the Gospel with our friends, neighbors, and relatives.

My friends, we are a blessed people. Did you notice what is missing from that list? All the stuff that, if we are not careful, we think our life is truly about. But sir or ma’am, please go back over that list slowly and ask yourself, “Are these not the elements of our lives that truly matter?” If we take this attitude into Thanksgiving and Christmas, we will truly have a blessed holiday season.

Now for the real reason for this article. I know, I know! It’s long, please bear with me till the end.

I have done several funerals in October including: a 54 year old man, Jeff Folk from our church, 52 year old Karen Oats, wife of Bro. Eddie Paul (Pastor at Berean, who did the main portion of the service), and 62 year old Sandy Belew, my next door neighbor. If I missed one, please forgive me. My memory is not what it used to be.

These, however, stand out to me because I am 56 years old, so in that respect these are ‘my people.’ I don’t know about you, but my way of thinking is that this is way too young. Bro. Jeff went to sleep one night and never woke up. Sis Karen and Sis Sandy fought cancer for many years.

We are not promised tomorrow. This is the motto that has gone through my mind all month in response to the news of each of these home-goings: “One life to live, soon it will pass, only what’s done for Christ will last.”

If you have gone through the BMAMO assessment, you know that the whole point of the document is to put the emphasis of our lives on people and their eternal souls. That which truly matters is that which will last forever. The stuff on those shipping containers will rot in a matter of years while our souls will last forever. Please make your life about that which Christ made His life about: the lost souls of men, women, boys, and girls.

May the Lord richly bless you is my prayer.
Bro. Ben Kingston

Our Commission

 150 150 admin
By:
0

Jesus said, “All power is given to me in heaven and in earth. Go ye therefore, and teach all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost; Teaching them to observe all things whatsoever I have commanded you: and, lo, I am with you alway, even unto the end of the world.”

Matthew 28:18-20

A Prayer for Help in Hopelessness

 150 150 admin
By:
0

Psalm 88:1-8
by Dennis Baker, BMAMO Brotherhood President

Heman, the son of Korah, was a temple musician during the reign of David. The Psalm begins with pain and perplexity but, unlike other psalms of lament, it closes without triumph. The psalm speaks of darkness (vs.1, 6, 12, 18), life in the depths (vs. 3-4, 6), the immanence of death (vs. 5, 10-11), feeling of drowning (vs. 7, 16-17), loneliness (vs. 5, 8, 14, 18), and imprisonment (v. 8). Heman was a servant of God who was suffering intensely and did not understand why, yet he persisted in praying to God and did not abandon his faith. Not all of life’s experiences have happy endings, but that does not mean that the Lord has forsaken us. From Heman’s experience we can discover instructions to follow when life falls apart and our prayers seemingly are not answered.

Come to the Lord in faith, vs 1-2. Heman’s life had not been an easy one and it seemed like it was getting even more difficult, and he felt that death was very near. Heman spoke as if he was ready to give up. But he did not give up! He still trusted in the Lord of his salvation. Heman prayed day and night believing that God would hear his prayers. No matter how we feel and no matter how impossible our circumstances, we can always come to the Lord with our burdens.

Tell the Lord how you feel, vs 3-9. There is no place for hypocrisy in personal prayer. When we pray, we need to be completely transparent and not tell the Lord anything that is not true or that we do not really mean. Heman confesses that he was “full of troubles” and felt like a “living dead man.” He was without strength and felt forsaken by the Lord. Heman told the Lord that He was responsible for His servant’s troubles! God’s hand put him in the Pit (the grave), and God’s anger was flowing over him like breakers from the sea. Whatever sickness he had was caused by the Lord and made him so repulsive that his friends avoided him He was without health, without light, and without friends. He felt like he was without God! He was a prisoner and there was no way to escape. Like Job, Heman wanted to know why all this suffering had come to him.

Defend your cause before the Lord, vs 10-14. The Scottish minister Samuel Rutherford (1600-1661) who suffered much for his faith wrote, “It is faith’s work to claim and challenge loving kindnesses out of all the roughest strokes of God.” He also said, “Why should I tremble at the plough of my Lord, that maketh deep furrows in my soul? I know He is no idle husbandman; He purposeth a crop.” Heman’s argument was simply that his death would rob God of a great opportunity to demonstrate His power and glory. What service could Heman be to the Lord in sheol? Heman prayed for healing and strength. Heman felt rejected and knew that God’s face was turned away from him. But he kept on praying.

Wait for the Lord’s answer, Vs 15-18. It appears that Heman could not even look back to a time in his life where he enjoyed good health, v 15. The billows that had almost drowned him (v 7) now became fiery waves of torment (v 16) as God’s “burning anger” went over him. The flood was rising, and he felt he was about to drown, and there was nobody near enough to rescue him. He was alone! The darkness was his friend because it hid him from the eyes of those who observed his suffering and may have said (as Job’s friends),“He must have sinned greatly for the Lord to afflict him so much.” He continued to pray and to look to God for help! “Though he slay me, yet will I trust him” Job 13:5. “I would have despaired unless I had believed that I would see the goodness of the Lord in the land of the living. Wait for the Lord; be strong, and let your heart take courage, yes, wait for the Lord” (Psalm 27:13-14). The Lord always has the last word, and it will not be “darkness.” When life falls apart and our prayers seemingly are not answered, come to the Lord by faith, tell the Lord how you fell, defend your cause before the Lord, and wait for the Lord’s answer. Not all of life’s experiences have happy endings, but that does not mean that the Lord has forsaken us. No matter how we feel and no matter how impossible our circumstances, we can always come to the Lord with our burdens.