Rural church’s missions vision reaches from Zephyr to Athens_82304

Posted: 8/20/04

Rural church's missions vision
reaches from Zephyr to Athens

By George Henson

Staff Writer

ZEPHYR–One Texas pastor wants to use any means possible to spread the news of Christ: From Plan A to Z, or really Z to A–Zephyr to Athens, that is.

Zephyr Baptist Church sent Pastor Steve Baker and his wife, Joyce, to meet and greet visitors to the Olympic Games in Athens, Greece. They are traveling with Randy Taylor, the church's recently retired minister of music, and his wife, Ginny.

It was the wives who initially recognized the opportunity.

“I'm a GA leader, and missions is really my heart,” Ginny Taylor said.

“I haven't taken many mission trips, but I was immediately drawn to this.”

A sixth-grade teacher for many years, she also recalled lessons she had taught on ancient Athens and was intrigued by the possibility of getting a first-hand look.

For Joyce Baker, the attraction was the crowds that are drawn to the Olympics.

“I love the thought of fulfilling the Great Commission in one location with people coming from all over the world to one place,” she explained.

It definitely is a change–only about 500 people live within an eight-mile radius of their home church.

Baker doubted whether the trip was a workable idea.

“This was too big, too out there to really consider it at all,” he said, noting he's more accustomed to taking mission trips to Colorado.

Gradually, however, he began to see it might be a possibility, and now it is a reality.

The two couples are part of a team of eight volunteers. Other members of the team are from Southside Baptist Church in Brownwood and a church in Louisiana.

The effort is the latest in a series of events that has gradually widened the vision for missions at the rural church, located between Brownwood and Goldthwaite.

“Up until three or four years ago, this church hadn't really been involved in missions outside the walls of the church,” Baker said. “They have been giving to missions all along, but there hadn't been much personal involvement in missions.”

The church's first foray was a trip to Fort Worth, where a church held carnivals to reach out to apartment complexes. The people from Zephyr ran the carnival rides, while members of the Fort Worth congregation got to know the people coming to the carnivals.

That venture led to their efforts in Colorado, where they helped a congregation with Vacation Bible School.

Now, the church is helping its pastor minister almost halfway around the globe as an extension of the church's ministry.

“They're not concerned about my being gone at all,” Baker said prior to the trip. “They have been very supportive–asking questions about our financial support, reminding us that they are praying for us. They've even been helping us to find Texas mementos we can take to a church in Greece that we will be visiting.”

Mrs. Baker said she expected the trip would give her a new viewpoint on a lot of things.

“I expect I will come back with a better and different perspective on different worldviews, since we will be meeting people from all over the world,” she said.

“Also, I expect to know God in a different way. Everything you go through in life helps you to know him in a different way–as either Father, Son, Savior, Lord or any other of the many ways he shows himself to us. I expect to know him better as I rely on him each day, I just don't know what form that will take,” she said.

“I'm going to see God work,” Mrs. Taylor said. “I don't know how it will be done, but whenever God works, you are changed. So, I expect to come back changed, and I'm leaving it to God how he's going to do that.”

The experience should have a ripple effect on the congregation left at home as well, Baker said.

“One thing that is true is that you can't grow a church beyond where you are yourself,” he noted.

“I don't know exactly how God may use us in Athens, but I think he will expand the faith that I have that he can use me to reach others. Then I can encourage the people here to reach out to the people around them.”

It's important to Baker that the trip not become a footnote in the church's history books one day, but the first step of an even longer journey.

“I don't want us to do this so we can say, 'Look what we did one time,' but something that will instill in us a desire to minister wherever we are–including here in Zephyr, our Jerusalem,” he said.