Missions workshop offers tips

Posted: 11/17/06

Missions workshop offers tips

By Craig Bird

Baptist Child & Family Services

DALLAS—There is no shortage of mission trip opportunities for church groups; the difficulty is in determining where to go and why, a workshop leader told Texas Baptists.

Dearing Garner, executive director for Africa for Children’s Emergency Relief International, led a breakout session on “Give Your Congregation a Mission—Choose a Place in the World and Go” during the Baptist General Convention of Texas annual meeting.

“God is very specific that we are to share his word with everyone, everywhere,” Garner said. “But we all know that some mission trips leave folks with a bad taste for missions because they are poorly organized and poorly focused. We don’t want that to happen to your church.”

The first and most important issue is determining where God is calling, he said. While that involves praying and listening, it also includes matching the talents of the group members with the needs of the target country, he explained.

Garner urged churches to investigate carefully who is leading the trip they are considering and, if possible, send one or two people on an advance trip.

The three basic types of short-term mission trips—direct evangelism, humanitarian and prayer-walking—offer distinct styles of sharing God’s love and word, each valid but each being appropriate to different gifts, he said.

Even though Garner has led all three types of trips, he said he is drawn to a humanitarian effort “that allows us to stand beside our Christian brothers and sisters in that country and meet a basic need while telling people about Jesus.”

Garner leads Children’s Emergency Relief International—the overseas arm of Baptist Child & Family Services—in its work with orphanages in Nigeria, Uganda and South Africa.

He has used his experiences in Moldova to illustrate how the process can work.

“As we were loading up the van to return to the team house, one of the doctors mentioned how surprised he had been by the number of cases of frostbite,” Garner recalled.

“As I looked over his shoulder, I saw a young girl standing in the snow. Nudged by the Spirit of God, I walked over to her and asked to see her hands. She held them out, and they were frostbitten. Suddenly and quietly, there a group of children surrounded our group, holding out their hands, all frostbitten.

“Within minutes, every glove we had was pulled off and given to them. We rode in silence for several miles before someone voiced what all of us were thinking: ‘We’ve got to do something.’ That was the beginning of Operation Knit Together, and this December, 47 volunteers from nine states will personally fit every orphan in the 66 government orphanages, all 12,000 of them, with new socks and new, warm winter boots. God showed us a need, put a desire in hour hearts to meet that need and has blessed our efforts to be faithful to that call.”