October 21, 2024
A missionally healthy church is actively engaged in missions by praying, giving, going, and sending. Mt. Pleasant Baptist Church in Carrollton has had a rich history in doing all four for years before COVID brought sending to a virtual halt.
Now that travel restrictions are loosened, Mt. Pleasant is back to sending its own to reach local, regional, national, and international fields.
Under the interim pastorate of Tony Samples, the church has reengaged summer missions opportunities for their teens and young adults. Two of these are Joanna Muse, a West Georgia College student who has committed her life to full time missions, and a student at Truett McConnell University who I'm not identifying because of security concerns. I’ll refer to her simply as MK. Both young adults will serve this summer as part of the many missional arms of their local church.
Joanna will be participating for two months in NAMB’s GenSend program, a fully funded missional opportunity to work alongside other missionaries as an intern for church planting and compassion ministries among the Native American Lakota tribe in South Dakota. MK is fulfilling her capstone missions project this summer by going for three weeks to work in a major urban center in South Asia through IMB, a trip designed to introduce international mission work to those considering further missions service. On average, NAMB reports about a third of student missionaries in summer programs indicate their plans to transition to the mission field after they graduate.
Both Joanna and MK point back to their early experiences in short-term missions as catalysts in considering lifetime missions. Joanna’s first mission trip with her family was when she was just 5 years old, as they joined in a Disaster Relief trip to Mississippi. Since then, she has taken multiple trips to various places, including her first trip to South Dakota in 2014, all of which has caused her to be “a missions-minded person.” MK said, “Because I grew up in a missions-minded church, going to South Dakota since I was in the 8th grade, it has shaped my heart to confirm a call to missions.”
Other influences were when missions was celebrated in the congregation. Both point back to Global Impact Celebrations hosted at their church. “Missionaries would come to our church and stay in our homes,” MK noted. Joanna mentioned that she was grateful for the “many missions opportunities our missions directors would present.” The church is involved in backpack ministries, food drives, and regular youth mission trips locally and abroad. “Our interim pastor Brother Tony has been a big encouragement recently, pushing us to follow the Lord without fear into missions,” Joanna noted.
Mission trips are about building relationships on mission fields. Joanna believes her local church provides great value in fostering relationships that create “long-term partnerships.” Since 2014, Joanna has been in regular online interaction through Snapchat with a young Lakotan girl who has become “a lifelong friend.” MK believes her church has surprised those to whom they’ve sent teams by sending them back again and again. “They didn’t expect us to come back, because that’s not what a mission team typically does,” MK said.
Joanna and MK are recruiting prayer support from their church family. They are asking the Lord to give them intentionality in making the trips about Him, not self-seeking experiences. They are praying for a gospel mindset, including MK’s learning to share a salvation testimony in four sentences in a foreign language, that will result in souls saved. They are asking God to give them cultural sensitivity to work within the context of their respective fields. And they desire for their church to be encouraged by their being a part of this missional work through prayer. When they return, both young adults plan to use their experiences to inspire and mobilize more to pray, to give, to go, and to send to wherever the Lord may call.
