Missions Reports

December 2022 – Mission Director’s Report

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Dear BMAMO Churches,

I certainly hope this article finds you doing well in the Lord’s grace and mercy.

Believe it or not, we are at the end of 2022. If you will remember, I said in my last article that we would get into the weeds of the lessons that I learned from taking the challenge of raising a tomato plant for the specific purpose of harvesting the seed from those tomatoes to raise another tomato plant next year. And all along, asking God to teach us lessons through this experience about discipleship.

Before I get into this month’s lesson, I want to share something Bro. Brian Meade shared with me about this practice. A missionary once told him that you can count the seed, and you can count the plants, but you can’t count the seeds within the seeds; they are innumerable. This is so true, and has the potential of disciple making.

Let’s revisit the last article. These are the lessons I learned and am continuing to learn.

It is hard work; it is impossible without surrender; it is a daily effort; it is rewarding; it is necessary; it is a way of life.

Summarizing statement: Tomatoes make tomatoes that make seeds that will make other tomato plants that will make other tomatoes. Therefore: Disciples make disciples that plant seeds that will make other disciples that will make other disciples. Seems simple, and when you look at these lessons it is simple – but simple doesn’t mean easy.

Lesson #1 – It is hard work.

It is hard to fight the weeds. It is hard to till the ground or plant in buckets or raised beds. No matter your method it’s hard work. It’s hard to start with seed – some come up, many don’t! It’s hard to get them to the stage where they can be put outside. Have you ever heard of “hardening off” your plants before youput them in the ground? One year I lost almost half of my transplants because I did this part wrong. It’s hard work once you get them in the ground. Daily weeding, once a week watering, staking, pruning, and the list goes on.

I think you get the picture: growing tomatoes for the express purpose of propagating fruit for next year’s plants is hard work. So, what can we derive from these lessons about discipleship? Well, it’s hard work to plant seeds into the souls of men, women, boys, and girls. It’s hard work to fight the weeds of sin in our own lives, much less the sins in others’ lives to keep from choking out the seeds planted. It’s sometimes hard work to get the soul of the church right to receive new plants. It is hard work to disciple a new believer to the point that they can handle the cruel world as a Christian and take Christian stands in a hateful and hostile world. And then when they are discipling others, it’s hard work to encourage them when their disciples struggle.

Don’t lose heart, dear disciples, it is all worth the hard work. We will look at lesson number two next month.

May the Lord richly bless you,
Ben Kingston

MISIÓN BELÉN (Bethlehem Mission) BMAA Missouri Hispanic Mission

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(from Bro. Juan Fernandez’s October newsletter)

Prayer Network
Every day we pause to prepare for a season of prayer at 12:00. We believe that prayer will continue blessing our missionary effort for protection, purpose and peace to trust in God’s timing and leading to every man of peace.

Bible Reading
We have a daily live production with some of our contacts that are willing to listen to God’s Word. As of next week will be reading God’s Word available to the public in general. Feel free to like and share the Facebook live video during the noon time. God’s Word must be proclaimed.

Discovery Bible Groups
New Discovery Bible Group is beginning 10/9/2022. We have had several opportunities to start 10 series of Discovery Bible Groups. The response to the Gospel is not always received as good news. That’s why we continue praying for men of peace that will embrace the Gospel.

Building up Our Community
We are pleased to have met new families in our community from countries like Mexico, El Salvador and Honduras. My lovely wife Hannah is utilizing her talents and education background to prepare two lessons per week to teach English to these families. We are expecting them to bring their children on these days and develop our children outreach while parents are learning English. I will be teaching these children about Jesus and having activities. These children are our hope to a new generation of Hispanics that will grow with a relationship with Jesus as his/her personal savior. Praise the LORD!

Family United Celebration LLBC
We are prayerfully hoping for a prosperous spiritual harvest as result of prayer and gospel presentation with friends and family in Florissant, Missouri and surrounding areas.
Pray for meaningful relations developing for kingdom laborers in our Hispanic friends. Also for meeting new brothers and sister in Christ to continue expanding the Gospel, discipleship and missions among our new contacts. Our discipleship process is simple: Discovery Bible Groups meet 3 weeks in a month. The 4th week will be gathering to share testimonies and celebrate God’s grace and mercy. This month we plan to join Pastor Brian Meade and the families at Lindsay Lane for opening their doors for a bilingual service. We pray this will be the first of many gatherings where Christ is glorified to continue spreading his plan and compassion to our community.

Prayer Requests
• Men of peace. We have 3 Discovery Bible Groups and are praying for 5.
•Volunteers for the children’s program for Monday and Wednesday, 6-8 p.m.
• Daily divine appointments to share the Gospel and learn how to minister better to our families in the area.
• BMA Seminary classes for myself. I am taking two classes, Church Management and Theology.
• Nahum and Ermilanda Discovery Bible Group, multiplication.
• Liz and Lucas Discovery Bible Group, provision for new status.
• Discovery Bible Group Sunday 8:30 a.m. Adan and Milos.
• ESL Class. Thanksgiving; monthly evaluation and fellowship. The last Wednesday of the month we have a potluck and students have presentation of their improvements on their English language studies.

September 2022 – Mission Director’s Report

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Dear BMAMO churches,

What an exciting time of year! A special shout out and thanks to Stony Point at Potosi, Bethel at Sikeston, Mt. Olive at Salem, and Loyalty at Sparta, Illinois. Dawn and I were blessed to be with these churches this summer to share the BMAMO Missions effort.

I would love to schedule your church for next summer! Please contact me and let’s fill the summer up with Wednesday appointments. I appreciate the pastors of all of our churches in Missouri doing their best to put the emphasis on missions in our churches.

We are so thankful to Bro. Gary Longstaff and SW MO BMA in voting in their local Association meeting to send a one-time gift of $2,000 to Bro. Juan Fernandez and a monthly support of $200. What a blessing they are and will be to the Fernandez family and the missions effort to reach the Hispanic population in St. Louis.

Please remember and make plans to attend our annual BMA of MO meeting on October 8th at Ozark Heights Baptist Church beginning at 9:00 a.m. Please be in prayer for this meeting as we continue to seek the Lord’s direction and power to launch a church growth and church planting movement through BMAMO Missions.

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

August 2022 – Missions Director’s Report

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Dear BMAMO churches:

I hope this article finds you basking in the glory and blessings of the Lord. It has been a great month of church camps for the State as well as the Meramec. We have seen souls saved and saved souls dedicated. What a thrill these ministries are to our association! If we do not have youth, we do not have a future. God has truly blessed us with a great amount of youth.

One evening, I noticed a particular group of young ladies that I know to be attuned to the Gospel and I made up my mind to challenge them to a list of questions to evaluate through the month of August.

Here are the questions:

What are you doing?
Who are you being?
What are you praying?
What are you sowing?
How are you cultivating?
How are you worshiping?
What are you saying?
What are you thinking?
What are you refusing… To do? To see? To accept? To
acknowledge?

Now, these are meant to be answered both positively and negatively, because they have both positive and negative answers. If our negatives outweigh the positives, then we have a lot of work to do. These answers can show an accounting of our daily actions, but ultimately it is for the use of evaluation to see where improvements can be made and possibly what the
next step in our Christian life needs to be.

Let me take the first question as an example so that you know exactly what I mean. “What are you doing?” Your answers from the positive, spiritual side might be praying each day, reading the Bible each day, trying to share the gospel each day, etc. On the negative side, your answers might look
like: thinking bad thoughts, watching bad things, listening to bad music, etc. We know we do some of these things even on the same day, and they are obviously counterproductive to each other. But again, this is for the sake of evaluation.

If you discover what you’re doing on a spiritual level is just basically to “mail it in,” to say that you did it, then the rest of the day you’re living less than Christianlike, then we have some drastic, serious changes to make!

This brings me back to the challenge that I gave the association at the mission symposium. I handed out tomato plants with the goal to save
seeds from the plant and replant successfully next year, all along asking God to teach us the lessons of discipleship along the way.

When it comes to living the Christian life and fulfilling the Great Commission, pretty much every discipline that is required to successfully
raise and reproduce a tomato crop is present in sharing the gospel and ultimately planting churches that plant churches.

My hope and prayer is that this challenge will result in a better awareness of how to start a church planting movement among our Missouri Association churches.

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

July 2022 – Mission Director’s Report

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Dear BMAMO churches:

Well, it seems like I just wrote an article for the paper! We are so thrilled that Bro. Jim Hoffmann is doing well, and I ask for your continued prayer for him. Bro. Juan’s dad seems to be improving or holding his own. We heard great news on Bro. Larry Woods’ wife Tammy this last week! They discovered that she does not have thyroid cancer, but instead a rare thyroid issue that takes care of itself over a few months’ time, Also, Bro. Larry’s nephew passed away during their delay of going to the mission field, which allowed Bro. Larry and Tammy to minister to the family during this loss. Please pray for the family during this difficult time. They are scheduled to leave for the field on July 12

Missions news about one of our very own here in Missouri:

Bro. Michael Quillman (missionary to Zambia) needs a vehicle. As a result of the sale of Charity Baptist church through Westview, a donation of $30,000.00 was given which we thought would be enough to complete the purchase, but due to the rising costs of everything these days, a $30k SUV in Africa six months ago is now $45k, so please pray for this additional amount to be raised quickly. If you are interested in helping as a church or individual, please contact Bro. Quillman or myself.

One of the expectations of the State for their director of missions is to visit with churches that request a visit from the director. Since I am a full-time pastor, I knew most Sundays were unavailable. Therefore, I made the special missions committee aware that I would only be available on Wednesday nights through the summer. I am pleased to report that on July 13 I will be at Stoney Point, August 17 at Bethel Sikeston, and August 24 at Mt. Olive in Salem. If any other Churches close to these venues would like to join in, I am sure these Churches would welcome that. I want to thank these Churches for inviting me and I look forward to sharing our missions effort and the BMAMO Benchmark Assessment at these Churches.

In closing, I want to share a pet peeve of mine. I love Christian music – all flavors! However, one issue I have is the groups that critique the church in their songs on the airwaves for anybody to hear it, and then we wonder why the world has such a sour view of the Lord’s church. I do not share the world’s view, much less the dissatisfied Christian’s view, of the Lord’s Church. Is there room for improvement? Always! But let’s keep the correct messages and songs in-house, please.

With that said, this is an article that goes directly to our churches. It is my understanding that it goes on our website also, but I would say that for the most part it is only BMA folks, and specifically BMA Missouri that avail themselves to this media. So here we go, I had a conversation with a young man that is helping me with the missions assessment, and we launched into a discussion on why some churches may struggle with change, new ideas, or new methods. And this word came up: autonomy. Autonomy is a beautiful word for our churches, because we are most definitely autonomous. What does that word mean for us? It means we do not have to bow to anyone except the Lord and His word on our faith and practice. However, what happens when a church needs to address change and ultimately embrace change to stay alive? Well, quite frankly, they need to not allow autonomy to become a stumbling block to the very thing they need to stay in existence. So this is what I am asking you as our BMAMO churches: please pray for and with me on how we can help any church struggling with any level of this issue so that for the glory of the Lord we can navigate these troubled waters to get churches to see the dangers when we allow our autonomy to blind us to reality.

Here are the questions I’m asking all of us to pray through and use to help us all truly understand autonomy:

What are you doing with your autonomy?
Who gave it to you?
Why did He give it do you?
What does He want you to do with it?
What good is it if you’re not using it for the intended purpose?

Autonomy is not for us to do what we want, but rather it is to do what we ought. It was never meant to be a shield for preferences.

I submit these questions with humility, trembling, and foreboding. I am not trying to do anything but hold up the mirror of God’s word and ask the question, “Is there room for improvement?”

Let’s enter into prayer together, ask our loving Father this question, accept the answer, and ask for His assistance to change for His Glory

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

June 2022 – Mission Director’s Report

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Dear BMAMO churches,

I hope all is well for you this month of June. I am sure you are aware of our need to lift our editor, Bro. Jim Hoffman up in prayer for his recent health concerns, I am grateful to the Lord for answered prayer for two successful procedures.

Also, please continue to pray for Bro Juan Fernandez’s father, who has had serious health concerns. I am also grateful for answered pray for Juan’s father and safe travels for the Fernandez family.

This is the first article since our missions symposium and mid-year meeting at Bethel. Everyone was so gracious of our attempt to treat you well. Special thanks to the folks of Bethel for rising to the challenge. I was especially appreciative of your acceptance in the late change of the program due to Bro. Larry Woods’ news about His wife’s health concerns. Bro. Juan brought an energetic and exciting message and update from His field. I also want to thank Bro Claude for his report on how Stony Point has responded, and as a result been blessed by raising the bar of awareness of missions in their local church. Again, I do not see the BMAMO assessment as a necessity, but as a tool that God can use to raise the bar of awareness in your local church. I am very excited about a meeting I have tonight with a professional in the area of evaluating businesses to see what improvements can be made in the assessment itself.

If I may, I would like to take this opportunity to share how the Lord put this all together. This professional, you see, is not meeting with me in his professional capacity. Instead, he’s meeting with me because he and his partner help charitable organizations with their tools and evaluating systems. I met him at a wedding reception through our mutual friend, Dr. Gavin Hooks. We started with small talk at the reception, and I basically asked his profession. When he shared it with me, I asked if he would mind reviewing the assessment to get his opinion if it is hitting the mark. He scrolled through the assessment, looked at me and said, “This is what I do! I can absolutely help you and let’s meet soon.” About two or three months ago I got the news from Gavin that Joe had had a devastating stroke and the doctors did not think he would make it through the night. Joe is a believer. Praise God, Joe did survive the night and in fact did much better than anyone expected, but he was still “not out of the woods.” So, on my tractor a few days after the stroke I just said, “Lord, You know what this man’s plans are, and You know what Your plans are. If You still have plans to use him I pray that he will recover completely. I know that I was not the only one praying, but I’m telling you God has answered those prayers! So much so that about two weeks ago out of the blue I get a text from him, “Hey brother Ben, do you still want to meet?” I said, “Joe, I’m just thrilled to hear from you!” His response was hilarious: “Well, I knocked on heaven’s door and they said not yet, so I’ve still got to work to do.” I just wanted you, the BMA churches of Missouri, to be aware of how God is working! I praise Him for it! You’ll probably be hearing the continuation of this conversation in next
month’s article.


Lastly, I would like to follow up on my challenge from the Missions Symposium. How is your tomato doing? If you’re reading this and you were not at the symposium, I will explain! I had several tomato plants laid in my lap right before the symposium, so I decided to share this caveat with the
people that were in attendance. I asked if they took a tomato plant, to transplant it and take care of it and try to bring it to full fruition. Then, save a few seeds from one of the fruits and then plant another plant the following year. This is essentially mirroring the discipleship process. God has not just called us to win people to Christ. He’s called us to win people to Christ AND TRAIN them to win people to Christ to train them to win people to Christ, etc. The ultimate goal of any seed is not fruit for that season. The ultimate goal is seed for the next season, and so on, and so on. As a result, I challenged the people that night to take that tomato plant home and do just that, All along, asking God to teach them lessons of discipleship as they care for this tomato plant. I’ve already had some interesting conversations with people and I’m excited about what God‘s going to do in teaching us how to truly reproductively disciple others.

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

PS this from Bro Larry Wood about his wife’s current health situation: After a series of tests and scans the doctor decided to do a biopsy this past Saturday. The results will take 7 to 10 days. We are rescheduled to fly out on June 28 and will keep this schedule if everything is good. If not, we will adjust our plan. If the biopsy is good, then her issues can be treated with medication. If not, she will have to have surgery and possibly some type of treatment.

So please add these needs to your church’s prayer list.

May 2022 – Mission Director’s Report

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Dear churches,

It’s hard to believe, but here we are in the fifth month of 2022. In the state association that means Missions Symposium and the mid-year state meeting of our associated churches.

This year’s meetings will be held at Bethel Missionary Baptist Church in Lonedell, MO on Friday, May 20 – Saturday, May 21. We cordially invite EVERYONE to worship and learn about our missions efforts abroad and here in the state of Missouri.

The Missions Symposium will begin Friday, May 20 at 6pm with worship in song, then Bro. Larry Wood will present his ministry, church planting in Ukraine, and his new efforts.

We will have a small break for refreshments, then resume with special singing and a report from Bro. Juan Fernandez on his work with Hispanics in the St. Louis area. Bro. Juan has been seeing wonderful seed planting and harvest.

We may have a surprise guest missionary speaker, then I will close out the evening with a report of the BMAMO efforts.

On Saturday, May 21 we will begin at 9am. Bro. Jerry Adams will lead our Association through the mid-year meeting and Bethel will provide a lunch for all attendees.

Please pray that there will be a sweet Spirit and the Lord will be lifted up in these meetings.

It’s my sincere desire to see us encouraged and challenged by what God is doing to reach a lost world to Himself.

Ben Kingston

April 2022 – Mission Director’s Report

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Dear Missouri Churches,

What a wonderful men’s Renewal Retreat we had! Special thanks to:

Dr. Gavin Hooks, who was our speaker that spoke on his book ‘The Core Principle,’ which is love the Lord your God with all your heart, soul, mind, and strength, and love your neighbor as yourself.

Bro. Chris Polk and his crew for preparing and serving our meals – it was tremendous!

Every man that was able to be there just had an amazing time! I want to encourage you, men, please mark March 24-25, 2023 on your calendar for our next Renewal Retreat per approval at our semi-annual meeting and the Meramec annual meeting as they fund the event.

Our annual Missions Symposium is right around the corner – May 20 at Bethel Missionary Baptist Church in Lonedell, Missouri beginning at 6:00PM. Bro.Larry Wood will speak to us about his missionary efforts in Ukraine, the three churches that have been planted there, and about church planting in general. Bro. Juan Fernandez will give a report and I will give a report as your missions Director. I’m so looking forward to this meeting. We will begin at 6:00 PM, take a half hour break at 7:00 PM and will end somewhere in the neighborhood of 8:30 p.m.

Please plan to come! There are two hotels in the area: Super 8 and Pinemark, where many of you stayed last year when the Mission Symposium was at New Testament. Please invite your church folks and let’s pack this event out for brother Larry and brother Juan. I know that you’re going to be blessed as we come and hear about missions and see how we can be more involved as a Church and as an association in our missions effort.

The semi-annual association meeting will also meet at Bethel church at 9 AM that Saturday, May 21.

If you have any questions about Mission Symposium, please do not hesitate to contact me 636-629-2526 and if you have questions about the semi-annual meeting on Saturday, Bro. Jerry Adams is our moderator, so he’s the one to contact about that.

I look forward to seeing you on May 20 and 21. May the Lord richly bless you!

Ben Kingston

Misión Bautista “Belen” STL MO

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“I have planted, Apollos watered; but God gave the increase” … 1 Cor 3:6 (KJV)

Home Bible Study:

Baby Isaac is here! Our friends Nahum and Ermelinda’s baby Isaac was born on 2/27 at 9:25 p.m. in the St. Mary’s Hospital in Richmond’s Heights, MO. He is 6 lbs7 oz. and 19 inches long. Very healthy and strong baby. He arrived 3 weeks early surprisingly for his parents and all of us. I met him 30 minutes after his birth and stayed almost until 2:00 am.

Bible Study in Misión Bautista Belen: Sunday 9:00 am starting this 3/6 is called Discovery Bible Group. We are promoting it on Facebook page “Misión Bautista Hispana” and with our many contacts we have made since 3/2021 We are hoping to practice hospitality and offering coffee and doughnuts those who arrive early… in our community we are known for always arriving late, so some encouragement here. We promote this event through our FB page so if you have a chance to hit like and share that will help to spread the word and this unity to share will be a blessing to others who don’t know about Jesus.

Evangelism:

We are so happy that spring is around the corner, also we are so thankful for this opportunity to say thank you for keeping me and my family in your prayers. We continue reaching out to Hispanic families and individuals in this area of Missouri, Harvest is plenty! Continue praying for more laborers. It is a privilege to bring you an update on how God is leading us.

Bible contacts, every Saturday from 9:00 to 11:00 am we are partnering with local business owner where Hispanic spend time shopping and hanging out to connect and offer time to hand out a Bible and go over the basics of the gospel. This has been a huge learning curve about our community. Many of the people contacted don’t have interest nor have heard about passages like John 3:16. Harvest is plenty!

Prayer:

Prayer Network: Follow us @Belenprayernetwork every day 12:00 pm. We read a passage of Scripture and pray for Salvation for each one of our contacts and special prayer request for health and wisdom while life happens. Wednesday at 7:00 pm in Florissant we continue recording a lesson of discipleship on Facebook live.

• Prayer walks: Every day from 2:00 to 2:45 pm we walk in neighborhoods seeking for open doors to share the gospel and pray for people in need.
Special Training this Month!

Aligning every believer with the mission of Jesus. The Multiplication Workshop a Missional Challenge by Dr. David DeVries. I pray and hope you have had the privilege of going through this amazing, effective practical tool for you and your ministry. I was able to join this training a second time last week in Conway Arkansas. Bro. Larry Barker, Elvis Garcia and Eli did an awesome job training us with real life experience and this amazing workbook.

Applying the WIN acronym:
What are we doing WELL?
What do I need to IMPROVE
and finally
What is Next?

I was able to redefine our Vision and core Values as well adjust our ministry timeline. In the last couple weeks, we have lost contact with two families who were already planning to join our church plant and becoming significant part of the core team. We celebrated 18 worship services, then they stopped coming and communicating…well God knows we did the best to equip them with the gospel. Now is time to go back to the basics: Prayer, Evangelism and Bible Study. We are excited to start a Discovery Bible Study this coming Sunday. If you have not gone through this workshop, I highly recommend it. It will encourage, will energize and help you define better your purpose and reason to serve the Lord Jesus.

“And all things are of God, who hath reconciled us to himself by Jesus Christ, and hath given to us the ministry of reconciliation”

2 Corinthians 5:18

Dios le bendiga! God bless you.

March 2022 – Mission Director’s Report

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Dear BMA of MO Churches:

Wow, we have two months in the book of 2022. The ole speed boat of life is barreling down the lake, that’s for sure.

We have been telling you about the Renewal Retreat for a couple of months, and now it’s decision time! I am asking all our pastors to prayerfully consider attending this special time. Please invite the men of your church also because this is for all the men of the association. This is a free event! Bro. Gavin Hooks will share in four sessions about the need of our churches and individuals to carry out ‘The Core Principle.’

You may ask, “What is the core principle?” Mark 12:29-31 KJV “And Jesus answered him, The first of all the commandments is, Hear, O Israel; The Lord our God is one Lord: and thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, and with all thy soul, and with all thy mind, and with all thy strength: this is the first commandment. And the second is like, namely this, Thou shalt love thy neighbor as thyself. There is none other commandment greater than these.”

This is probably one of the most popular or most well-known scriptures in the Word of God. In his sessions, brother Gavin will bring out the connection between these verses, America’s founding, and the desperate need today of the Body of Christ to continue to carry out this principle, which is to be the core of all we do.

Please pray that many of our pastors and men attend, and please pray that we hear from God on this most vital issue. I have had several indicate that they are coming, and I am thrilled and excited. If you could, let us know when you get this paper how many are coming from your church, then we can make food arrangements.

I continue to hear great things from the churches that are taking the benchmark assessment. If you don’t get the result you were hoping for, please don’t lose heart! Remember: this is a twice a year endeavor so please attempt to assess your church every six months. If you have any questions, please contact me. I would love to personally present Missouri missions to your church on a Wednesday night through the summer.

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