Randy C. Davis, president and executive director of the Tennessee Baptist Mission Board, shares gratitude for Tennessee Baptists partnering with Southern Baptist churches to cooperatively send and support international missionaries. — IMB photo
MURFREESBORO — An International Mission Board Sending Celebration is a time to support those who are going on the field to share the gospel with a lost world. Such an event allows participants the chance to commemorate those who mentored and discipled them. For many, their mentors are current or former IMB missionaries who have encouraged them to ask how God might use them through the IMB.
New Vision Baptist Church in Murfreesboro hosted a Sending Celebration on Nov. 10 that featured 49 newly appointed missionaries, including three from Tennessee. The IMB event kicked off the Tennessee Baptist Convention’s annual meeting, which is celebrating the 150th anniversary of the state convention.
Randy C. Davis, president and executive director of the Tennessee Baptist Mission Board, shared how thankful Tennessee Baptists are to partner with Southern Baptist churches to cooperatively send and support international missionaries.
“We celebrate the fact that Southern Baptists are working together all over this country to be one of the strongest sending networks of churches,” Davis said. “It impacts lostness at home and around the globe.”
New Tennessee missionary shares testimony
Christian Castellano served as an IMB Journeyman in Peru after working as a ministerial assistant at Bellevue Baptist Church in Cordova, his sending church and the church where he was baptized at age 7.
Bellevue Baptist is also where Castellano, as a middle schooler, met Kyle Roy, who was on staff at Bellevue and is currently an IMB missionary in Brazil.
“He taught me the importance of prayer and evangelism and having a global perspective of God’s mission to save the world,” Castellano said about Roy.
In high school and college, Castellano went on mission trips to Nicaragua and Honduras. He eventually led church groups overseas. Toward the end of his Journeyman term in Peru, he believed the Lord gave him the desire to return to Peru as a career IMB missionary.
While he was preaching at a church in Lima, Castellano gave a call to action, inviting people to step into God’s mission to reach the world. He said the Lord made it clear that the sermon he was preaching was for himself. In that moment, God was telling Castellano he was to come back to Peru.
“As a Journeyman, I had the opportunity to engage with unreached people groups in remote parts of the Americas,” he said. “God is up to something, and I am so excited to be a part of it.”
A special time of prayer was observed for the new missionaries with four Tennessee Baptist church leaders voicing prayer in Arabic, Korean, Spanish and German.
Chitwood thanks Tennessee Baptists
IMB president Paul Chitwood said he was blessed to be back in his home state of Tennessee, especially to celebrate new missionaries sent to the nations—the very thing that brought Tennessee Baptists together 150 years ago and Southern Baptists together 180 years ago.
IMB president Paul Chitwood speaks at the IMB Sending Celebration at New Vision Baptist Church in Murfreesboro. Chitwood offered a message of encouragement from 2 Kings 7. — IMB photo
“Your gifts through the Cooperative Program and the Lottie Moon Christmas Offering make their work possible,” Chitwood said. “And the beauty of our cooperative model means that every church represented in this sanctuary tonight had a gospel witness this past year in 155 countries around the world!”
Chitwood also took the opportunity being in the “Volunteer State” to express the need for more Southern Baptists to serve on the mission field.
“We need more ‘volunteers’ on the mission field—planting churches and proclaiming the gospel,” he said. “Every job is an opportunity to share the gospel.” He also emphasized the varied skills, jobs and roles available to missionaries today.
Chitwood offered a message of encouragement from 2 Kings 7:3-9 to the missionaries, as well as those who pledge to support them. In a message he called “Lessons from Lepers,” he told the crowd to recognize the condition of the world, tell what God has done and recognize that “this is a day of good news” (2 Kings 7:9).
The next Sending Celebration will be Feb. 5, 2025, at First Baptist Church of Charleston, South Carolina. B&R — The work of the IMB is made possible through generous giving to the Cooperative Program and Lottie Moon Christmas Offering®. The Lottie Moon Christmas Offering® is a registered trademark of Woman’s Missionary Union.
