WMU Archives - Baptist & Reflector

GA GROUP IN KENTON HELPS ORGANIZE ‘BLESSING BOX’ FOR COMMUNITY

April 12, 2021

By Ashley Perham
Contributing Writer, B&R

KENTON — First Baptist Kenton GAs are taking what they’ve learned about missions and put it into practice right in their hometown.

The mother of nine-year-old GA Chayslee Mays shared the idea of a community Blessing Box to share free food and other items to members of the community. Anyone can take from the Blessing Box, and anyone can give.

Chayslee and her mom, Madison Byrd, had seen a similar box around town and thought it would be a good fit for FBC Kenton, according to Rhonda Poore, who helps with the GAs.

One side of the Blessing Box is stocked with easily prepared food items such as cereal, beans, rice, and canned vegetables. They also band water bottles and cracker packs together for people who need snacks on the go. [Read more…]

LOTTIE MOON CHRISTMAS OFFERING HITS CUMULATIVE $5 BILLION

April 12, 2021

By Myriah Snyder
IMB senior writer/editor

International Mission Board leaders are celebrating a monumental milestone in Southern Baptist life: On March 31, 2021, the Lottie Moon Christmas Offering® surpassed $5 billion total gifts since collection to send missionaries to China began in 1888.

The Lottie Moon Christmas Offering is an annual offering collected by believers around the world to support international missions. The offering is unique because 100 percent of the gifts are used to provide for missionaries who are spreading the gospel to the ends of the earth.

“I praise God for this significant milestone in giving through the Lottie offering as it indicates that the love of Southern Baptists for the lost has not waned, nor has their commitment to sending and supporting missionaries through the IMB,” said Paul Chitwood, president of the International Mission Board. [Read more…]

BRONAUGH SET TO BEGIN NEXT CHAPTER

April 7, 2021

By Ashley Perham
Contributor, Baptist and Reflector

Denise Bronaugh

FRANKLIN — Denise Bronaugh recently concluded 18 years as adult missions and ministry specialist for the Tennessee Woman’s Missionary Union.

In her role, she focused on adult mission education organizations like Women on Mission, Adults on Mission and My Mission.

“My goal was to get adults involved in missions whether or not it was an age level organization or just a churchwide mission project,” Bronaugh said.

A large part of her job was organizing the annual Get-Together and Connection events. These events, Get-Together for women and Connection for girls, encourage personal growth and engaged participants in missions and mission opportunities. Bronaugh proposed the idea of having Get-Together and Connection at the same time in 2005. [Read more…]

SEPARATED ‘TOGETHER’

April 7, 2021

WMU hosts event online; groups gather to watch

By David Dawson
ddawson@tnbaptist.org

Members of First Baptist Church, Kenton, gather in a cabin to watch the 2021 Virtual Get-Together & Connection. In the photo, Tennessee WMU adult missions and ministry specialist Denise Bronaugh welcomes the “attendees” to the event.

FRANKLIN — This year’s WMU Get-Together & Connection featured a significant change in venue.

Instead of gathering in Gatlinburg, as attendees have traditionally done since the 1990s, this year’s event was held in homes, churches and various other meeting places across the state.

For safety reasons related to the COVID-19 pandemic, Get-Together & Connection — which is normally a three-day conference — was presented as an online event that was streamed to registered participants on March 20.

Groups and individuals can still register to watch the event at www.accelevents.com/e/GetTogetherConnection. Registration is open through the end of April, and all program content videos are available through the end of June. The registration fee is $35. [Read more…]

‘WHAT THEY’RE SAYING’ ABOUT VIRTUAL GET-TOGETHER & CONNECTION

April 7, 2021

Listed below are a few comments that “attendees” gave to the WMU staff after this year’s Virtual Get-Together and Connection. Also pictured on this page of several of the groups who gathered together to watch the event.

The Church at Sugar Creek, Humboldt

• This year’s virtual event sparked the interest of some women in our church who probably would not have otherwise attended it in Gatlinburg.

• I think all (who watched) learned about what God is doing throughout the world TODAY.

• All of our ladies enjoyed the conference. We are already hoping that you will make this virtual conference available for next year. We have NEVER had 20-plus ladies attend this conference in Gatlinburg, but the Saturday format enabled so many more to come together. Most of the ladies are not active in WMU, and we are hoping that the relationships that were made during the conference will result in more ladies participating in WMU.

Tulip Grove Baptist Church, Old Hickory

• What a great day we had at Get-Together!! We so appreciate all the hard work and long hours you put into making this a success.

• I have attended numerous technology conferences across the state and Southeast and your WMU Conference was a shining light on how to do it right! … All of the videos and e-mails with instructions on what was going to happen and how to connect were easy to understand and implement. Your tech team certainly was prepared and probably spent hours and hours preparing for the conference! Kudos for a job well done!

Judy Luck (who attends East Athens Baptist Church, Athens), Shelby Lord (Calvary, Lenoir City) and Ann Lawson (Ten Mile Baptist Church, Ten Mile).

• Get-Together was wonderful. What a blessing!

• I would like to say that over the past year I have been involved with a lot of online meetings and trainings and the WMU Get-Together was organized and ran extremely well. The pacing and variety of events was executed with precision. It was a blessing and a worshipful day.

• Well done! (The) event was almost flawless.

• We loved getting to see that many missionaries. I am not sure if the opportunity exists normally to see this many or not, but this format definitely helped to see so many more, at least for my group (that watched together). B&R

Fairview Missionary Baptist Church, Lancing

First Baptist Church, Kenton

KINGSPORT CHURCH PROVIDES WELL FOR MINISTRY IN PUERTO RICO

March 30, 2021

By Ashley Perham
Contributing writer, B&R

Jorge Santiago, pastor of One Church Comerio (OCC) in Puerto Rico, baptizes a new believer.

KINGSPORT — In June 2020, Betty Cress of Beulah Baptist Church in Kingsport was shocked to learn about a church in Puerto Rico that had been without water for a week.

As she learned about the instability of water in Puerto Rico, she discovered that the solution to the problem was a well.

The Women on Mission group at Beulah Baptist learned about the ministry of pastor Jorge Santiago at One Church Comerio (OCC) in Puerto Rico last summer. The women made a video of encouragement to send to Santiago and began to correspond with him. [Read more…]

LONG-TERM ENGAGEMENT STARTS WITH ‘PUTTING MISSIONS INTO THE DNA OF NEW BELIEVERS’

February 23, 2021

By Trennis Henderson
WMU National Correspondent

Kim Cruse, who served as an International Mission Board missionary to the Philippines for more than 20 years, began serving last year as Tennessee WMU’s missions discipleship specialist. A strong proponent of missions involvement and support, she emphasized, “You want a missions call? Read the Bible. It’s in there. Jesus said, ‘Go to all the nations.’ ”
— WMU photo by Pam Henderson

KNOXVILLE — How can your church start a missions group like Love World to help young women develop a heart for missions?

Kim Cruse, a former International Mission Board collegiate church planter in the Philippines, insists the need is urgent. “If you can put missions into the DNA of a new believer or of a young believer early on in their Christian life, they will always see missions as important,” she emphasized.

Cruse, who began serving last year as Tennessee WMU’s missions discipleship specialist, poses the tough, thought-provoking question: “Where are the future IMB missionaries going to come from and where are the future mission supporters going to come from if we’re not able to engage and connect and get these younger women involved in missions?

“This has been a burden of WMU for many years,” she said, “so I love what has happened at Wallace (Memorial Baptist Church in Knoxville).” Missions leaders there launched Love World in 2019 to reach and involve women from age 25 to 40 in missions discipleship and support. [Read more…]

SAFETY, SECURITY AND SALVATION

February 23, 2021

Love World, Welcome House impact Knoxville, and the world, for Christ

By Trennis Henderson
WMU National Correspondent

Sunny Ikojoh, who serves as minister of hospitality for Welcome House Knoxville, came to the U.S. from Nigeria in 2015 to attend seminary. The Welcome House facility is a former missionary guest house that the ministry rents from a local church to provide short-term housing for refugees.
— WMU photos by Pam Henderson

KNOXVILLE — How can the crisis of an Iraqi refugee family’s house fire help churches engage young women in missions involvement amid their busy 21st century lives?

Several congregations in the Knoxville area are discovering the answer through hands-on interaction with such ministry groups as Love World, Welcome House Knoxville and Knoxville Internationals Network.

Kimberly Poore is a member of the Love World team at Wallace Memorial Baptist Church in Knoxville. The missions group, which launched in 2019, is geared toward young women age 25 to 40. She said the leadership team seeks “to educate and also provide mission opportunities for other Wallace women within our church.”

Love World’s missions focus includes ministering alongside Welcome House Knoxville, a nonprofit ministry that provides temporary housing for immigrant and refugee families in the Knoxville area. [Read more…]

WMU ANNOUNCES VOLUNTARY RETIREMENT PLAN AMID COVID FINANCIAL CRISIS

August 10, 2020

By Julie Walters
National WMU news office

BIRMINGHAM, Ala. — In response to a decline in sales due to COVID-19, national Woman’s Missionary Union announced Aug. 5 it is offering a voluntary retirement plan to staff.

“We have worked incredibly hard over the past several years to ‘right size’ our organization based on revenue projections,” said Sandy Wisdom-Martin, executive director of national WMU. “With two difficult back-to-back downsizings and budget cuts, our goal has been to simplify and put limited resources where they can make the most impact for the Kingdom.”

Over the past four years, WMU has cut 34 percent from its budget, which will be $5.2 million beginning in October for 2020-21. Sales of curriculum for missions groups is WMU’s main source of revenue. However, with so much uncertainty related to the pandemic, many churches are not ordering these resources. [Read more…]

WMU PRESIDENT HONORED FOR VOLUNTEER EFFORTS

March 19, 2020

By Lonnie Wilkey
Editor, Baptist and Reflector
lwilkey@tnbaptist.org

Outgoing Tennessee WMU president Martha Pitts of Germantown Baptist Church, Germantown, accepts the Tennessee Baptist Mission Board’s “Light Award,” in recognition of her volunteer service in Tennessee.
— Photo by David Dawson

FRANKLIN — Missions has been an integral part of Martha Pitts’ life since she was a GA (Girls in Action) at Whitehaven Baptist Church in Memphis and was asked to pray at an associational event.

“I was nurtured through GAs,” said Pitts, who will be concluding her four-year term as president of Tennessee Woman’s Missionary Union during the annual WMU Get-Together scheduled for March 20-22 in Gatlinburg.

And, Pitts never forgot what GAs meant in her life. She served as a GA camp counselor during her teenage years and taught GAs as an adult. “I still love teaching kids about missionaries and the places they serve.” [Read more…]

WMU hosts event online; groups gather to watch

Love World, Welcome House impact Knoxville, and the world, for Christ

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