On January 12, 2010, a 7.0 magnitude earthquake rocked Haiti, killing an estimated 220,000 people and leaving over 1.5 million homeless. The media was quick to pick up the story, broadcasting images of the tragedy. As a result, aid from around the world was pledge to help this small, poor island nation recover and rebuild. Sadly, two years following the disaster, only a small percentage of pledged donations have been received and the United Nations reports about 20% of the necessary clean-up/rebuilding has taken place.

In January 2011, the American Baptist Churches of Pennsylvania and Delaware (ABCOPAD) sent its first 14 member Mission Team to provide earthquake disaster relief and share Jesus love with the people of Haiti.

ABCOPAD, in partnership with International Ministries and Conscience International, began building Rubble Houses in the community of Grand Goave.

Grand Goave is about 7 miles from the epicenter of the earthquake; since the disaster, many families have been living in tents. Conscience International, under the direction of Jeremy Holloman, devised a way of building new safe homes using the debris from houses destroyed by the massive quake.

The ABCOPAD January 2011 mission team was the first team to complete one entire Rubble House in a single mission trip. Since that first trip, ABCOPAD has dispatched 3 additional teams to build rubble house and care for the people of Grand Goave. So far over 75 rubble houses have been constructed through Conscience International and voluntary teams.

Through local church donations along with funds collected by the Region’s AB Women and AB Men, ABCOPAD has received contributions to build many homes in grand Goave. A sixth mission team is scheduled to be in Haiti in October 2012 and two more teams will depart in January and February of 2013. ABCOPAD has been partnering with other American Baptists in New Jersey, New York, Illinois and Los Angeles in this exciting project.

There are times when God calls us to be an inch deep and a mile wide in our mission work. However, this ministry in Grand Goave, Haiti, appears to be one place God is calling us to be an inch wide and a mile deep. Relationships are being created with people in the community, which are in turn allowing mission team members to share the gospel and introduce people to Jesus.

For ABCOPAD, the people of Grand Goave have become neighbors.

Isaiah 58:12 (TMSG) 12You’ll use the old rubble of past lives to build anew, rebuild the foundations from out of your past. You’ll be known as those who can fix anything, restore old ruins, rebuild and renovate, make the community livable again.

Now, almost 375 years later, The First Baptist Church in America is still leading the way in its openness to the transformative work of the Spirit.  The church was one of the first in American Baptist Churches USA to make a financial contribution to Transformed by the Spirit.  This new initiative is designed to help small groups of churches and individuals explore the adaptive changes needed to allow us to respond to the changing environment in which we find ourselves.  Together, American Baptists are beginning a journey to rediscover the authority of Scripture, to listen to the voice of the Spirit, and to be reshaped by our participation in God’s mission.

“We are excited and proud to be a part of such an important endeavor that’s been going on for 375 years,” said Rev. Dr. Dan Ivins, 36th pastor of The First Baptist Church in America. “We are still advocating the separate and complementary relationship between church and state and we still ‘reserve the right to accept everybody.’ What Roger Williams established is still worth standing for and rightly celebrated.”

Baptist history is filled with the stories of individuals who heard the voice of the Spirit and were willing to take risks to follow the calling.  American Baptists continue to listen and respond as we move into the bright future that God has for us.

Today as we worship, we are mindful of the providence of God, God’s hand in human history advancing the missio dei, God’s great reclamation project of God’s beloved creation.  For the events we celebrate this weekend, cannot be understood apart from the heart of God and the love among Father, Son and Spirit that overflows into the life of the world in order that a broken, degraded and fallen, yet beloved creation, might be redeemed, restored, and reconciled through God’s own sacrificial love.  Henry Nouwen reminds us that no word in all of scripture is as sweet and poignant as the title Beloved which God bestows upon us in Christ Jesus.

It has been said that big events turn on small hinges.  The sailing of a small ship out of Salem harbor two hundred years ago this day with its human missionary cargo of Adoniram and Ann Judson, and Samuel and Nancy Newell, was such.  A revolution was underway.

There are certain moments in history which forever change the frame of reference by which we view the world.

Columbus’ voyage to the New World in 1492 was one such moment.  The world would no longer revolve exclusively around Western Europe as the center of the earth.  The world as flat bounded by precipitous edges and looming leviathans was a world view forever shattered.  Revolution was underway.

In 1543, the publication of the the work of Copernicus in the field of astronomy would shatter the belief that the universe revolved around the earth.  A helio-centric model of the heavens displaced not only a geo-centric but a anthropo-centric view of the universe.  Rather than being the center, humanity now became the inhabitants of but one small planet in a vast universe.  Revolution was underway.

In 1776, the divine right of kings to rule subjects was forever shattered with this declaration:  “We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness. — That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed . . .”  Democracy would forever shatter the worldview of absolute monarchy.  Revolution was underway.

Revolution was underway as well in the church.  Her frame of reference had long been bounded by twin fault lines as impermeable as those which geographically hemmed in the world before Columbus.  One was the concept of Christendom, the other the theological worldview of high Calvinism.  Christendom was a fortress formed by the unity of the political, cultural and religious aspects of European civilization.  Within her walls all was safe.  Outside her walls all was lost.  Christendom, though, was not only a fortress, it was a prison.  And the church lived comfortably within the walls of this fortress/prison.

The other fault line was high Calvinism whose theology of predestination was prominent in the life of English Baptists and other Reformed Protestant bodies of the early 18th century.  The high Calvinists in the Baptist fold were known as “particular” Baptists – I guess because they felt God was pretty particular about those God chose.  Such a theological worldview ruled out any necessity for evangelism or mission – twin hallmarks of Baptist life as we know it today – for God had already determined one’s eternal destiny.  High Calvinism was another fortress within whose walls the church comfortably lived.

Do you get the picture?  It is one of the church living comfortably within the walls of Christendom and High Calvinism a cultural home that was as fitted to the church as a glove to the hand.

But revolution was underway!  In the person of a Baptist shoemaker, named William Carey.  Carey was a gifted man with deep spiritual sensitivity who became a Baptist through the influence of the family to which he was apprenticed.  Carey was also a voracious scholar reading widely for his self-education.  As he read scripture and writings of the day, the Spirit began to chisel away at the fortress walls of Christendom and hyper-Calvinism.  There was still more light to break through from scripture!
Revolution was underway.

Wikipedia describes the events this way.  “In 1785, Carey was appointed the schoolmaster for the village of Moulton. He was also invited to serve as pastor to the local Baptist church. During this time he read Jonathan Edwards’ Account of the Life of the Late Rev. David Brainerd  [a missionary among Native Americans] and the journals of the explorer James Cook, and became deeply concerned with propagating the Christian Gospel throughout the world. His friend Andrew Fuller had previously written an influential pamphlet in 1781 titled “The Gospel Worthy of All Acceptation”, answering the hyper-Calvinist belief then prevalent in the Baptist churches, that all men were not responsible to believe the Gospel. At a ministers’ meeting in 1786, Carey raised the question of whether it was the duty of all Christians to spread the Gospel throughout the world. J. R. Ryland, the father of John Ryland, is said to have retorted: “Young man, sit down; when God pleases to convert the heathen, he will do it without your aid and mine.”

In 1789 Carey became the full-time pastor of a small Baptist church in Leicester. Three years later in 1792 he published his groundbreaking missionary manifesto, An Enquiry into the Obligations of Christians to use Means for the Conversion of the Heathens.

Carey later preached a pro-missionary sermon (the so-called Deathless Sermon), using Isaiah 54:2-3 as his text, “Enlarge the site of your tent, and let the curtains of your habitations be stretched out; do not hold back; lengthen your cords and strengthen your stakes. 3 For you will spread out to the right and to the left, and your descendants will possess the nations and will settle the desolate towns.”

Carey stirred the hearts of his listeners as he urged them to, “Expect great things from God; attempt great things for God.”  Carey who would himself serve in India became the father of the modern missionary movement.

Here in the United States, the Spirit was at work breaking down those same walls that were imprisoning the church from her true call as a missionary people.  And here, God would use a pastor’s son who had rejected the faith, Adoniram Judson,  as the hinge to turn the Baptist churches in America outward in mission to the world.

After reclaiming his faith and rededicating his life Judson, in 1809 during his first year of theological studies at Andover, would read a sermon by Dr Claudius Buchanan of England entitled, “The Star in the East”.  Drawing upon Matt 2 and the account of the Wise Men who came seeking the newborn king of the Jews because they had seen “his star rising in the East,”  Buchanan laid out his case for a missionary effort in Asia.  Judson’s imagination would be forever changed, and through him Baptist churches in America would rise to the forefront of the revolution in mission that God had set in motion.
The sailing of the tiny brig, “The Caravan,” with its tiny cargo of four missionaries 200 years ago was the beginning of a long line that stretches even into the present of those who would offer themselves in service to the spreading of the Gospel to all the nations, for “sacrifice or service” as the seal of the American Baptist Foreign Missionary Society states.

The revolution God was leading centered not just upon the sending of missionaries.  It was even more profoundly a re-defining of the nature of the church as a missionary body.  Prior to this revolution it could not have been said that “the church exists by mission as a fire exists by burning.”

God is at work today in a new revolution in the life of American Baptists and the church at large in the United States.  Speaking afresh through texts such as Luke 10, the sending of the Seventy, the Spirit is beckoning us outward beyond the crumbling cultural walls that defined the life of the church in the 20th century, that locked us in upon ourselves in the “Christendom” that was the United States.

We no longer live in that world.  We now live in a religious landscape where the Christian faith is but one option among many, or for an increasing number of our fellow citizens where the option of choice is “none of the above.”  In a recent poll reported in USA Today, 41% of those interviewed said that matters of religion did not occupy them at all.  God does not show up on their radar screen.  Faith is not the reference point for their lives.  Church is not their home.

In our context, what would missionary Adoniram Judson say to us?

I believe he would first say, “move beyond the walls that separate you from the people to whom you have been called.  Like me, learn their language; speak in their accents; enter their culture; live among them.”

It is clear friends, the church cannot live as gated community.  We must enter deeply into the lives of our communities, of our neighbors, into our world.  In a religiously plural society and as those who respect conscience in matters of faith, we share as the Indian theologian, D.T. Niles has said, “as one beggar telling another where to find bread.”

Secondly, he would say, “Persevere.  Be faithful.  For six years, 72 months, 2190 days, 52,560 hours he labored for his first convert.  And his first convert was not of the nobility, nor of the wealthy, nor of the learned.  As with the early church, God chose what is foolish to put to shame the wisdom of the world, for God first moved on the heart of a thirty-five year old who was poor and without family, Maung Nau.  Even in the face of fierce opposition the church in Burma grew and today that church is part of God’s revolution within our churches today.  The face of the church in the US will not be that of our past.  God’s disruptive Spirit is profoundly reshaping us into a missionary people, into subversive colonies of heaven who live as the hands and feet of Christ for the world.  Old forms are passing, new ones are rising up within us as we struggle as the people of God to live and share the Gospel of our Lord Jesus Christ.  Persevere.

Finally, he would remind us that “the future is as bright as the promises of God.”  For the ministry of reconciliation which has been given to us is not first and foremost ours.  It is God’s work.  Around the world, the church is growing, even in the face of persecution and trial.  God is at work in amazing ways, his Spirit transcending human barriers of law and custom, drawing people to Christ.  A pastor in North Africa was describing the amazing work of the Spirit in his country.  Their church regularly holds medical clinics in needy villages.  They had chosen one such village after much prayer though they had been discouraged from visiting there.  After they had set up their temporary clinic, they opened the door to discover a line had developed that was blocks long.  When the first person entered, the medical staff asked, “What is your problem?”  “I have no problem,” was the reply.  “Then why are you here?” was the puzzled response of the doctor.  “Because each night in my dreams Jesus is coming to me asking me to follow him, and I thought you as a Christian could tell me what it means.”  Fully the majority of others in line that day were there for the same reason.  No human walls can block the work of the Spirit.  The mission of the church is God’s mission.  Therefore, “the future is as bright as the promises of God.”

Revolution, God’s revolution is underway.

Most pastors would like to have an office with a window. I have one in San Francisco Chinatown that I can see both the Transamerican building, with its pyramid shape that is now one of the signature cityscapes representing San Francisco, and post 1906 earthquake apartment buildings that have single-room occupants. SROs are simple one room apartments whose residents use common restrooms and kitchen facilities.

When I am inside the church building, I am consumed by tending to the needs of our congregation. I’m calling those who are sick, creating the coming Sunday’s bulletins, publishing next month’s newsletter, planning programs, and of course, finishing up this Sunday’s sermon. Recently, we replaced our staircase carpets with a new vinyl flooring so that our church home is neat and clean. As pastors, most of us spend the majority of our time just tending the sheep.

But when I look outside my office window, I can’t avoid seeing the world. I wonder about the urgent human needs in the SROs that we are not yet aware of. I wonder about the many tourists who come to San Francisco who may be in search for life’s meaning rather than just San Francisco fog. When I look out my window, I am always reminded of how God is leading me and our church to be more missional and prophetic in proclaiming the Good News.

Since the beginning of the year, I participated in a number of pastor gatherings where many of you shared the challenging roles that you find yourselves in when you look out your office window and see the world. We are called to be both pastors and prophets—to tend sheep and to reach out with Good News.

Since the San Juan Biennial in June 2011, our ABC family is earnestly participating in Transformed by the Spirit, an initiative to be open to God’s Spirit to renew and discover God’s plan for us, locally, regionally, and together as American Baptists. For most of us, we know how to be pastoral and for most of us we can certainly discover how we can be more outreaching! God is calling us to go to a new land—for me that might be simply what I can see outside my church office window!

As your Vice President, I look forward to meeting you in the coming two years and maybe I’ll get a chance to visit your church office to see the world.

Rev. Dr. Don Ng
Vice President
American Baptist Churches USA

On February 19, 1812, the ship “Caravan” left Salem, Massachusetts.  Aboard were Adoniram and Ann Judson, Luther Rice, and others bound for the mission field in India.  Although no human planned it, these three followed the Spirit of the living God; they were personally transformed, and their transformation led to the creation of the denomination now known as American Baptist Churches USA.

The missionary service of the Judsons in Burma is legendary.  They spent many arduous years there, suffering from both illness and ill treatment.  Ann Judson lost her life in Burma as a relatively young woman.  Yet the Bible was translated into Burmese, individuals came to know the love of Jesus, and a vibrant Burmese church was born.  Still today, many Burmese Christians are able to trace their family heritage to the ancestor who first heard the Good News from Adoniram Judson.

The work of Luther Rice is equally significant.  He was the one who returned to the United States to seek aid for his colleagues on the mission field.  Rice found that Baptists in America quickly coalesced around the cause of missions, and by 1814, the Triennial Convention was formed to support the work.  Today, that body of Baptists is known as American Baptist Churches USA.

For almost two hundred years, our denomination has worked to follow the model set for us all those years ago.  We are whole-hearted supporters of the missionary endeavor, believing strongly in the Biblical mandate to “go…and make disciples.”  We are also at work in the United States, providing a way in which churches can cooperate to serve as the hands and feet of Christ right where they are.

The journey aboard the “Caravan” was transformative to three individuals, to the more than 1.3 million believers today who are members of our denomination and to the hundreds of thousands who have been touched in the name of Christ by those women and men who dared to follow in the missionary footsteps of the Judsons.

This is truly an event to celebrate.

Yours in Christ,

A. Roy Medley
General Secretary
American Baptist Churches USA

Go to a New Land: Journeying Toward God, a conference presented by American Baptist Churches USA and the Minister’s Council, met from Monday, January 23 – Thursday, January 26 in Orlando, Florida. The conference marked the second time that the Orientation to American Baptist Life conference for new ministers and seminarians has joined together with the Ministry Renewal conference traditionally sponsored by the Ministers Council.

The conference was highlighted by speakers, times of worship and an opportunity to come together and grow as American Baptist leaders. Additionally, there are workshops for those attending the conference for ministry renewal, and introductions for new ministers and seminarians to the partner organizations that make up American Baptist Churches USA.

The Ministry Renewal focus included twelve separate workshop offerings led by nineteen presenters, made up of ministers, American Baptist leaders and skilled professionals. Current American Baptist ministers and leaders had an opportunity to learn and grow while examining their ministries and focusing on challenges, preaching, multiculturalism, finances, pastoral care, and making adaptive change in a changing environments.

The conference speakers and ministers included:

Rev. Dr. Alan Roxburgh, president of the Missional Network

Rev. Dr. Zina Jacque, pastor of The Community Church of Barrington in Barrington, Il.

Rev. Douglas S. Avilesbernal, pastor of Calvary Baptist Church, Norristown, PA

Rev. Dr. Dwight Stinnett, executive minister of ABC of the Great Rivers Region

Participants of the Orientation to American Baptist Life track of the conference met with denominational leaders and staff in unique sessions and also joined the Ministry Renewal track for worship and other common experiences. Seminarians and new ministers heard from representatives from American Baptist Churches USA, American Baptist Home Mission Societies, American Baptist Personnel Services, International Ministries, Ministers Council, Ministers and Missionaries Benefit Board, and ABCUSA Regions.

The conference ended after a worship service on Thursday evening, January 26.