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Bob Shelton’s life is split into halves: 30 years inthe U.S., starting in Mt. Vernon, Ill. And 30 years inCanada, serving as a church planter andstrategist. “When God called me, I thinkI brought my heart to Canada, and Inever felt a release from that call.”

Shelton started his ministry at LoganStreet Baptist Church in Mt. Vernon,where he had become a Christian yearsbefore. He also pastored First Baptist in Zeigler beforeheading to seminary in Texas.

Then, he went to Canada, where 90-95% of the pop-ulation doesn’t know Christ, he said.

“There’s a great harvest field here.”Shelton is the city coordinator for the North Amer-

ican Mission Board’s “Send” initiatives in Calgary andEdmonton, two cities in the province of Alberta (di-rectly above Montana). The cities are about 180 milesapart, but both have been affected by an influx of peo-ple coming to work in the oil and gas industry. To-gether, the cities are home to almost 2.5 million people.

“Ultimately, the world has come to these two cities,”Shelton said. To meet their spiritual needs, Send Cal-gary and Send Edmonton will help start numerousnew churches over the next several years.

The task is particularly challenging because of themultiple types of churches needed. In Calgary alone,there are 240 ethnic groups represented and 140 lan-guages are spoken.

Shelton and the Send strategy teams in each city areseeking to mobilize partners to help planters reach dif-ferent city segments, called “communities.” One ofthose partners is Gateway Baptist Association, head-quartered in Edwardsville, Ill.

The association has entered into a three-year part-nership with the Send initiatives in Calgary and Ed-monton, and will send their first mission team thissummer.

Richard Newcom, pastor of Whitelaw Avenue Bap-tist in Wood River, Ill. will lead that team as they workwith Vertical Church, a new congregation in the Cal-gary suburb of Cochrane. Newcom and Greg Gomez,Gateway’s missions coordinator, took a recent “visiontrip” to Alberta to meet with church planters and ex-plore needs the association can help meet with theGood News of Jesus Christ. For more, go to www.namb.net/Canada.

– Meredith Flynn

Illinois churches field teams in secular nation

We serve in … CanadaBob Shelton connects church planters in Calgary (shown here)and Edmonton with potential partner churches from the U.S.

A series from the Illinois Baptist • Vol. 3

Basics for baptistswho we are what we believe

how we serve

Canada prides itself onmulticulturalism. The vastvarieties of peoplesthat immigrated thereafter WW2 trans-formed the Anglicanand Catholic landscapeto a pluralistic patchworkincluding Muslim andEastern religions.

OH, CANADA: TOLERANCE AND FORGETFULNESS New laws enforcing “tolerance” have had a coolingeffect on evangelical witness. For many Canadians,the outcome is no religion at all. “Now, we’re raising up a generation that has no

religious memory,” said missionary Bob Shelton.“They have no idea whenever you talk about faithand Christ, you might as well be talking about Mo-hammed or Buddha, because seeds of the Gospelhave never been sown in their life.” A nation with arich religious heritage now has little faith in faith.

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Read: Article 2, Section B, ofThe Baptist Faith & Message(2000) at www.IBSA.org/B101

How do you experience an invis-ible God? Many people strugglewith that issue today, just as theydid in the time of Moses. The Is-raelites saw God as cloud and fireleading them to the PromisedLand, but even so, God Himselfwas still unseen. And in the daysof the prophets, God was known intheir holy proclamations. He wasin a word from a messenger, and astill small voice, but he was con-sidered still largely unknowable.

And today, people want evi-dence of God. What evidence isthere?

The Gospel of John opens withspectacular assertions of Christ’spreexistence (“In the beginningwas the Word”), the parity of Hisstatus with the Father (“and theWord was with God”), and Hisdeity (“and the Word was God”).Jesus was fully God. But from hisposition as God, equal with the Fa-ther, he chose to become a humanbeing. He was on a mission. The Baptist Faith & Message

states, “Christ is the eternal Son ofGod” who came to us by “identi-fying Himself completely withmankind.” This is demonstratedthrough the anticipation of Hiscoming, His unique conceptionand birth, His sinless life and obe-dience, and His resurrection, exal-tation and future return in power.

As one who is fully God andfully human, Jesus is the only onewho can explain God to human be-

ings. He did it by becoming one ofus. Jesus’ own disciples wanted tosee something: Show us the Fa-ther, they said. Jesus replied, Ifyou’ve seen the Son, you’ve seenthe Father (John 14:7-9).

There are many biblical pas-sages that attribute divine titles tothe Son; for example, Messiah,Son of God, Son of Man, Son ofDavid, the Lord, and, on reservedoccasion, God.

And the Bible also lists His di-vine prerogatives; for example,forgiving sins, receiving ourprayer, being the joint source withthe Father of grace and peace, ex-ercising power over the physicalworld and demonic powers, andeven raising the dead.

But the Gospels also showChrist’s full humanity through Hisbirth, hunger and thirst, exhaustionand suffering, and ultimately Hisagonizing death.

Both the implicit and the explicittestimonies form the incontrovert-ible foundation to His deity andhumanity. Or, to put it anotherway, only the Son of God could beso completely human that heweeps and thirsts like ordinarypeople, and yet is so above the cre-ated order of things that he canovercome death. The Bible saysso, and the evidence is clear – inJesus, the Son.

When the movie “The Passionof the Christ” was shown in the-aters, the audience watched a mangetting beaten to a pulp and themovie came to an abrupt end.What wasn’t clear to the uniniti-

ated was the implication of Hisdeath. While the Gospels narratemostly the fact of His death, theepistles unpack the significance ofHis death. As The Baptist Faith &Message states, “in His substitu-tionary death on the cross, Hemade provision for the redemptionof men from sin.”

People in Old Testament timesunderstood that God rightly heldan unrelenting wrath against thembecause of their sin. Only after thecrucifixion of Jesus do peoplebegin to see how God provided hisown Son to satisfy that wrath.

The apostle Paul illuminated thesignificance of Jesus’ death by em-ploying a dizzying array of legal,religious, commercial, relational,familial, and betrothal metaphors:

• the judge who justifies the guilty

• the priest who atones for the sinner

• the benefactor who redeems the prisoner

• the friend who reconciles with the enemy

• the father who adopts his children

• and ultimately the husband who betroths the bride.

Christ’s death on the cross repre-sents a “gift basket” full of God’sblessings upon the repentant sin-ner, available without regard togender, race, or socio-economicstatus. It is a gift only possiblethrough the Son. Jay Noh is IBSA’s Multiethnic

Church Planting Catalyst inChicagoland.

OD THE SONWHAT WE BELIEVE ABOUT...

Why do you think Christ had to be both aman and God?

How does Christ’s full humanity affect yourfaith in Him? His deity?

Which metaphor of Christ’s death is themost meaningful to you? Why?

Paul’s heart was commandeered by thislove of Christ (2 Cor 5:14). Was yours?

CONSIDER THIS

G

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23

4

For personal study or group discussion

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If Southern Baptists hadsaints, Annie Armstrong wouldbe one. While other pioneeringwomen of her generation werecampaigning for the vote andagainst alcohol, Annie Arm-strong took up anothercause, one witheternal con-sequences.

“The futurelies all beforeus...shall it onlybe a slight ad-vance upon whatwe usually do?” wrote the tall,ambitious, headstrong, and bysome accounts, formidablewoman. “Ought it not to beabound, a leap forward, to alti-tudes of endeavor and successundreamed of before?”

Born in 1850, she first wasinvolved in ministries withAfrican Americans in Balti-more. But it was a plea fromOklahoma that crystalizedher concern for missions. A ministry to Native Ameri-cans asked for help providingclothing, and Annie urgednearby churches to assist. Eightwhite churches and six blackchurches responded and packedbarrels with 200 new suits ofclothes for shipment.

As a result, missions groupsemerged in the churches, andeventually a national organiza-tion developed. The Woman’sMissionary Union, an auxiliaryto the Southern Baptist Con-vention, formed in 1888 withAnnie Armstrong as its leader.

That same year legendarymissionary Lottie Moon askedfor more workers. “The onlyhope for China is through thewomen,” Moon wrote, urgingSBC women to raise $2,000.The head of the Foreign Mis-sion Board (now called the In-ternational Mission Board)turned the job over to Arm-

strong. She started organizingvolunteers and writing letters.

The women raised$3,315.26 that Christ-mas.

Aside from herdogged determina-tion, “Miss Annie”is best known forwriting letters. Inone year she wrote

18,000 letters urgingchurches to support mis-

sions. She often took a type-writer and a secretary with heron vacation, and if she didn’thave those available, she con-tinued writing by hand.

She didn’t do it alone. Arm-strong’s genius is that she builta national organization withgroups in every state and mostevery Southern Baptist church.And she took that undreamed“leap forward” seriously. In1906, her final year in nationalWMU leadership, she took aparticular five-week trip of4,830 miles, making 31 stopsand 41 speeches. One attendersaid she had the gift to make“one see the whole world asone’s field.”

The Easter Offering forNorth American Missions wasnamed for Annie Armstrong in1938. Since then, $1.1 billionhas been given in her name.

ETERNITY IN VIEW

There are 25,000

in Canada

WHAT MAKES US DIFFERENT

Works!CP

1/10 evangelical

Through Cooperative Program,when you give on Sunday

every dollar touches the world.

– Eric Reed

Think about it:

1. Annie was both headstrong andforward thinking. How do these traitswork together?

2. Annie’s missions interest startedwith people in Baltimore, then Okla-homa, then China. Trace yours.What about your church?

3. In what way is the whole world“one’s field”?

4. Of all the things you are involvedin, which ones have eternal impact?

35 million people

theWorldfrom a new angleSee

39% Catholic

Baptist24% no religious

affiliation2%

Canada has

United States316 mil. people

1/3 evangelical22% Catholic

Baptist20% no religious

affiliation 16%

There are 11,500members of theCanadian NationalBaptist Convention,which is affiliated withthe SBC.

There are 298 CNBCchurches, compared to45,000 SBC churches in

the U.S.

Across the globe, thereare more than 3,000UUPGs. Of those, about

230 of them live in the Americas.

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Servant evangelism opens doors

ILLINOIS IN SIGHT

How can we open doors forevangelism in places that seemclosed to the Gospel?

Servant evangelism. A pastor in Cincinnati named

this concept when he started a newchurch based on the servant modelof Jesus. He and his team packedup mops and buckets and went torestaurants and bars offering toclean the restrooms. Seriously.

The Christians found that thepeople who worked in those estab-lishments who usually had thethankless task of scrubbing toiletswere very grateful. And they werewilling to listen when those crazyChristians talked about their Ser-vant-Master, Jesus. These are not“random” acts of kindness. Theyare very intentional.

Servant evangelism has spreadacross the nation. Some churchplanters in Chicago made befriend-ing the school one of their tacticswhen moving to the city.

“I went to the principal andasked, ‘How can we help makeyour school better?’” said ScottVenable, who started planting achurch in Chicago’s Wicker Parkneighborhood in 2010. “She wastaken aback. She never had some-one come to her and just say,‘Wow, we want to serve you here.’

“Through that relationship wehave an amazing children’s min-istry. We started coaching theirsports teams, tutoring, and built re-

lationships – just by washing thecommunity’s feet and serving.”

Several IBSA ministries useservice as a strategy for demon-strating the love of Jesus Christ.More than 1,100 kids and leaderswork in locations all over Illinoiseach spring as part of “Children’sMinistry Day.” Hands-on missionsprojects help participants developa love for service. And it shows therecipients of their ministry in tan-gible ways that God loves them.

This month, “Serving AcrossIllinois” will mobilize churches to

meet needs in their communitythrough a one-day project.

And “Missions Spectacular”puts faith into service on 40 proj-ects over three days in the summer.

IBSA is sponsoring “back-to-school missions events” that reachout to local schools and families.Contact the IBSA missions team,and they will partner you up withchurch planters who could usesome help with the fall outreach project. E-mail BarbTroeger@IBSA.org.

Location: Centralia

Target: Unreached families and single adults

Characteristics: Located 60 miles east of St. Louis, Centraliais a community of blue collar, farming, and working class familiesliving in single family dwellings.

Pray: For church partners to help plant a church in this area

mission illinoisPray for a new church

– From the IBSA Church Planting Team

Resources for B-101COMING SOON

• Leader’s guides for study groups

• Self-guided tutorials on SBCmissions, Baptist beliefs,distinctives, and the Cooperative Program

• The whole 20-part series will be available for download in time for fall discipleship classes and small groups.

Available soon online atwww.IBSA.org/B101.

This is a 20-part study on the basicbeliefs and missions of our denomi-nation. It is designed for new believ-ers, new Baptists, and those whowant a refresher. Clip it out of thenewspaper, fold into a four-pageleaflet, and share with the peoplewho would benefit from the informa-tion. You might even lead a study.B-101 can be used for:

• New members classes• Study on missions in Illinoisand around the world

• Exploration of doctrines inThe Baptist Faith & Message

Make as many photocopies as youneed for study groups, churchmembers, and worship attenders. Or download the PDFs atwww.IBSA.org/B101. Produced by the editors of theIllinois Baptist: Eric Reed, Meredith Flynn,Lisa Sergent. Designed by Kris Kell.

ABOUT B-101

Clip and Share B-101 withPastorsChurch staffDiscipleship leadersMissions leaders New members

Look for B-101 inevery issue!