Missouri Baptists link with WorldconneX

Posted: 4/13/06

Missouri Baptists link with WorldconneX

By David Williams

WorldconneX

ROACH, Mo.—The Baptist General Convention of Missouri has entered into a three-year partnership with WorldconneX, a missions network Texas Baptists launched in 2004.

The state convention’s executive board approved the partnership, designed to encourage and help Missouri Baptist churches and their members personally engage in missions. The board also approved a three-year partnership with the Baptist General Convention of Texas.

“This opens the door for us to provide the same opportunities to Missouri Baptists that we already provide to Texas Baptists,” said Bill Tinsley, World-conneX leader.

Opportunities include development of affinity groups through which churches and institutions work together as they focus on specific people groups, nations, regions or missions approaches. Some Missouri Baptists already are involved in the Guatemala team WorldconneX developed during the past two years.

Other international missions opportunities also will be available through the partnership, Tinsley added.

“We are developing diplomatic connections in hard-to-reach parts of the world, and Missouri Baptists will be welcome to join alongside Texas Baptists as we move into those areas,” he said.

Missouri Baptist churches also will be eligible to take advantage of the “front-line sending services” being developed by WorldconneX to help churches send their own missions personnel. Those services include cross-cultural training, strategy consultation and ways for churches to handle insurance, annuity and international money transfers for people they send overseas.

WorldconneX also will provide New Realities conferences for clusters of BCGM churches. The conferences center on what Tinsley calls the seven new realities that have changed the world and missions in the 21st century.

In addition to working with churches, WorldconneX will help individual church members with short-term and long-term missions connections to fulfill God’s vision for their lives, Tinsley said.

Gary Snowden, missions mobilization team leader for the Baptist General Convention of Missouri, said the convention already has begun to benefit from its relationship with WorldconneX.

“WorldconneX facilitated our involvement with the Guatemala affinity group and a face-to-face meeting with the different entities and the leadership of the Guatemala Baptist Convention in Guatemala City in January,” Snowden said. “That, in turn, has led to the establishment of a three-year partnership agreement between the (Missouri convention) and the Guatemala Baptist Convention.”

WorldconneX staffer Carol Childress participated in Missouri Baptists’ recent annual meeting, leading a Bible study in one of the general sessions and guided a breakout session on new realities in missions.

“We anticipate that the relationship with WorldconneX will enable the churches affiliated with the (Missouri convention) to strengthen their direct involvement in missions at many levels,” Snowden said.

The partnership with Missouri Baptists fits well with the overall strategy of WorldconneX, Tinsley said.

“While WorldconneX focuses on services to Texas Baptists, it was created to relate to evangelical missions entites and others outside Texas,” Tinsley said. “From the outset, WorldconneX has recognized that while our primary base is Texas Baptists, we are not limited to Texas and not limited to Baptists.”

The WorldconneX board largely is composed of Texas Baptists but includes members from Virginia, Indiana and Florida.

As part of the partnership, the Missouri Baptists committed 10 percent of the world missions portion of their budget to WorldconneX. The actual amount of that funding is difficult to forecast, said Executive Director Jim Hill, because each Baptist General Convention of Missouri church chooses how to divide its Cooperative Program giving. Churches determine whether their national/world portion goes to Missouri Baptist world missions or to the Southern Baptist Convention or Cooperative Baptist Fellowship.

“I would anticipate that our world missions initiatives will grow over the next few years,” Hill said.

The Missouri convention also will forward gifts from churches and individuals designated to WorldconneX, he added.