By Staff, Baptist Message
WINNFIELD – A focused view of missions led Jeremy Albright, youth pastor at First Baptist Winnfield, to search the Internet.
As a result, he discovered a variety of simple, effective mission “projects” any individual can become involved in.
“We talked on a Wednesday night about our mission as a church,” Albright said. “We talked about how easy it is to say the right words, the right Bible answers, but it’s difficult to do the things to back up what we’re saying.
[img_assist|nid=7142|title=First Winnfield Youth|desc=The youth group at First Baptist Winnfield show off gift cards they collected for a ministry. The group are learning about missions through simple but effective mission “projects” such as the gift card ministry.|link=none|align=left|width=640|height=427]“We tossed out ideas of what we’d like to see happen,” the youth pastor continued. “Not on a church-wide scale, but individually.”
Albright spent several days searching the internet for mission projects teens could do on an individual basis. He found 15, like Toms Shoes – www.tomshoes.com – which gives a pair of shoes to an underprivileged child for every pair of shoes purchased.
“I gave an overview of all 15 of the different ministries on a Wednesday night during Bible study,” Albright said. “One was a ministry that takes gift cards with just a little bit left on it, and puts them all together. One kid’s change might not be worth a trip to Starbucks, but combined with a lot of other peoples’ change, it adds up.”
Albright encouraged the students to find low-amount gift cards at their houses, and to bring them to a scheduled Sunday Night activity called “gift card giver party.” In order to get into the fun and games they had to bring a gift card.
“I was thinking maybe 30-40 dollars,” Albright said. “They gave $240.”
In another emphasis, Albright challenged the youth to drink only water for two weeks, as a reminder of all the people in the world who don’t have anything else to drink, and of all the people who die for lack of water.
For the next two weeks the teenagers saved their spare change – and the money they would have spent on something other than water to drink. They pooled their money and the $230 they collected was given to Blood Water Missions.
“This is a mission group that goes into countries where people fight over clean water,” Albright said. “They ease the tensions between the groups, and dig water wells.”
To read more about the mission possibilities Albright found, read www.baptistmessage.com and click on the article titled “Individual mission projects anyone can do.”
“You don’t have to do elaborate mission trips across the country,” Albright said. “You can focus in on what you can do individually. This is something churches of all sizes can do.”