September 19, 2024
VALDOSTA, Ga. — Georgia Baptists are blessed to have a significant number of churches that seek to enable and empower a community of saints to embrace and evangelize a lost world through the love of Christ. Northside Baptist Church in Valdosta is one of those churches.
Josh Foster, whose scope of responsibility at Northside includes missions, evangelism and discipleship, is the staff member designated to mobilize a mission force within the fellowship of the church.
“Northside has launched 127 members on mission to 22 cities and countries so far this year,” Foster explained. “The countries include Mexico, Brazil, Argentina, South Africa, Romania, Italy, Germany, the Balkans and several countries in Central Asia. The church also provides constant support for God’s work in Uganda and India."
The church members are motivated, Foster said by "going to places where there are people who have never heard the name of Jesus, and seeing people who long for hope and meaning to their lives.”
The Northside Mission teams sometimes organize and implement evangelistic crusades with fervent gospel preaching. These crusades and other outreach efforts have resulted in 452 professions of faith this year.
In Mexico, Argentina, and Brazil the volunteer missionaries focus on ministry and gospel presentations in the schools. Foster reported, “We help the students with their homework and organize team building games which are loved by the kids. However, we never miss an opportunity to share the Gospel with the students; and then we arrange for local pastors to follow up on the commitments by discipling them and getting them in their churches.”
The Northside mission teams have invested considerable time in Monterrey, Mexico, the largest city of the northeastern state of Nuevo Leon and the second-largest metro area in Mexico. Foster said, “We have been able to start ten new churches in this great city and God is blessing their ministries.”
In South Africa, the Northside Church has connected with a missionary who wants to raise up local pastors so they will not be as dependent on missionaries from abroad. Foster emphasized, “The missionary is hoping to assemble 300 God-called men who will commit to eight weeks of intense training and go back into their communities to preach the Gospel. The goal is to get the newly trained servants of Christ to go into Zambia, Botswana, Zimbabwe, and Namibia to share the good news of Jesus Christ.”
Sometimes mission teams help churches construct buildings, dig wells in underdeveloped countries so people can have fresh water, and frequently provide food and clothing to those who live in poverty. Northside is engaged in some of those important projects, but according to Foster those kinds of benevolent ministries simply open the door to share the gospel.
“We do the necessary altruistic work in the morning and early afternoon," he said, "then we go visiting door to door for two or three hours, inviting people to the evangelistic crusade that we have planned for the evening.”
The Valdosta church averages about two mission trips somewhere in the United States or overseas each month. Foster commented, “We actually had five teams all go out the same week this summer.”
In addition to the international mission ventures, Northside has touched the lives of people and churches in New York, Vermont, Florida, and the cities of Boston, Indianapolis and Savannah.
Foster testified, “This summer the church sent a contingent of students to Savannah to help with a Vacation Bible School, and then they came back to assist in our own VBS. They were so excited and inspired by the way God used them in Savannah that their involvement in our own VBS made a tremendous difference. They got their friends and neighbors to come to our Vacation Bible School and it was our best ever.”
Churches that send out volunteer missionaries for a week or more usually find that it has a residual impact on their own church.
Foster explained, “I have the opportunity to disciple those who volunteer for mission trips in 6- to 8-week sessions. I try to help them develop their testimony in such a way that they do not focus so much on what their lives were like before they trusted Christ, but on the wonder and joy of having one’s sins forgiven and the new and abundant life that Christ provides the believer."
“However," Foster continued, "being a part of a church that is truly engaged in a missions movement changes the perspective of the whole church. People are more excited about the truth of God’s Word, more enthused about our worship services, more interested in giving to the cause of Christ, and many of them seemed to be surcharged with joy and emotion about all that God is doing in our fellowship.”
