Lynn P. Clayton
LBM Editor
Give us a year of knocking on doors five to eight hours a day,
conducting telephone surveys, working with kids in backyard Bible clubs, helping
start three churches and living four to a two-bedroom apartment. If you accept,
you have to give us only $10,000.”
Lynn P. Clayton
LBM Editor
Give us a year of knocking on doors five to eight hours a day,
conducting telephone surveys, working with kids in backyard Bible clubs, helping
start three churches and living four to a two-bedroom apartment. If you accept,
you have to give us only $10,000.”
One could hardly blame folks who thought there would be no
takers for such a deal. However, five Louisiana Baptist college students spent
the last year living out just such an agreement with the Baptist Collegiate
Ministries Division of the Louisiana Baptist Convention.
When asked why they took a year to work on a Metro-One Team
in Lafayette under the described circumstances, to a person, the team of five
gave the same answer.
“Because God said so.”
The three mission pastors, the director of missions in Lafayette
and the many people whose lives were touched directly by the students during
the past year all are thankful they heard Gods call and said yes.
“We are two years further along now than we would have
been if these students had not helped us,” explains Louis Charrier, pastor
at Vatican Baptist Mission in Vatican near Cankton, with whom the students spent
their first few months. That work now averages 45 in attendance.
This experimental ministry – which concludes May 25 –
was born at the 2000 Spring Assembly of the Louisiana Baptist Campus Ministry.
As director of the collegiate ministry division of the state
convention, John Moore challenged students to give one year of their lives doing
mission work in a metropolitan area of the state. Accepting the challenge also
meant each volunteer student had to raise $10,000 of support for the ministry.
“We had just been talking and thinking about, as a part
of Changing Lives in Changing Times (the Louisiana Baptist Convention program
theme for the first years of the New Millennium), how students could be more
involved in this kind of thing,” Moore explains.
“I believe this generation of college students is more
willing to do things on the edge than any I have been around. We wanted to challenge
that spirit.”.
Moore shared his vision with the assembled students, many of
whom already were mission-minded and already involved in various efforts.
“I was praying during the assembly that God would call
students to do this,” says Lydia Mann, a college student from DeRidder.
“As I prayed, I was just sure that God was calling me to be a volunteer.”
Five other students felt the same call during the annual assembly
and made the decision to become members on the first team. One dropped out after
three months.
After discussing the possibilities with Director of Association
Missions Bert Langley, whose area includes Lafayette, Moore selected the South
Louisiana city as the focus site for the initial teams work.
Team members included:
Lydia Mann of DeRidder, who completed her first
three years at Louisiana College. She will complete her senior year at University
of Louisiana at Lafayette, so she can continue working in one of the churches
she helped start.
Kathleen Burnum of Quitman, who graduated from
Louisiana Tech University in Ruston and will start her studies at New Orleans
Baptist Theological Seminary this fall.
Lucius Aaron Hornsby of Lafayette, who graduated
from University of Lafayette in business administration and will enter the workforce
this fall.
Judy Chastain of Lake Charles, who attended McNeese
University three years and is not sure where she will attend her senior year.
Jennifer Hill of Pineville, who graduated from
Northwestern State University in Natchitoches and will move back to that area,
where she will be married in July.
After working with the Vatican mission, the team worked with
New Life Community Church that meets in the Evangeline-Gulf Coast Associational
Missions Center.
That work had 32 at its first meeting with an initial offering
of $1,500. Cody and Andrea Broussard are leading in this new church start.
Now, as the student team concludes its work, members are working
with Paul and Kimberly McDaniel to start a church in the residential area south
of Acadiana Mall. The team already has located a couple who have offered their
home for the initial Bible study.
The team started their work with few guidelines and a scant
job description. They simply knew they were to help church starters birth churches.
“Each one of the pastors that we have worked with has
had different ways of doing things,” Hornsby says.
But in each case, the work involved investing ample amounts
of shoe leather, putting flyers on doors, door knocking, phone calling and building
relationships.
The basic needs of team members and their operating expenses
have been met by their own financial contributions to the ministry, money given
to the ministry by the Louisiana Baptist Collegiate Ministries and New Work
Department, as well as the Southern Baptist North American Mission Board and
the Evangeline Baptist Association.
Originally, host families were sought to provide places for
the team members to live. However, Hornsby actually lived at home, and another
male team member also lived there until he dropped out from the program.
When appropriate arrangements with host families could not
be found for the female members, the decision was made to put the four of them
into a two-bedroom apartment.
The ladies admitted that living in crowded quarters with the
same people with whom they worked all day was the biggest challenge of the year.
“But we worked through it,” Chastain says.
Each team member received $600 per month for expenses from
the funds they had raised, $200 a month for food from the association and $270
a month plus insurance coverage from the North American Mission Board.
They also will receive a stipend of $1,200 when the ministry
ends this week.
Tom Cobb has served as the Metro-One Team director. He is a
Mission Service Corps volunteer who retired as Baptist Campus Minister at Southeastern
Louisiana University in Hammond two years ago. Cobb also has traveled across
the state, seeking volunteers for the next year of Metro-One. Felix Sellers,
pastor at Duson Baptist Church in Duson, has been the field supervisor for the
team.
The results have been good, insist all of those who work on
or with the team.
“This is the finest group of young people Ive ever
worked with,” Langley says of the Metro-One members. “They have been
totally cooperative. Anything you ask them to do, they jumped in there and did
it.”
Sellers agrees.
“It did what it was supposed to,” the Louisiana Baptist
pastor notes. “It gave me a kingdom perspective. We learned how to work
outside the church while looking at the future of how things must be done.”
Looking back on their year, all five college students affirm
the experience as well.
“It was what God wanted me to do,” says Hill, who
postponed her marriage a year to participate.
“I wouldnt trade the experience for anything,”
Burnum adds. “Its been tough – a major culture shock. I
had never been called a red neck.”
“Its been a tremendous project,” Langley reflects.
“We hoped for three church starts, but we thought if we got one, we would
be excited. Actually, even apart from the three the Metro-One Team helped start,
six or seven other new works have cropped up.
It seems like when you get something going in church starts,
it breeds more,” Langley notes.
The Metro-One Team effort will skip at least one year.
“We werent able to line up another team,” Cobb
says. “It may have been the $10,000 or the full year. Students just werent
able to come up with what they needed to participate. We made some adjustments
and found some other funds, but it was too late for this year.”
Still, Moore stresses: “We have committed to do this again,
and we are hopeful to have another team ready to go in time for 2001-2002. We
probably did not do as good a job getting the word out to students this year
as we did last year.
“We ask Louisiana Baptists to pray for us as we do this
again next year,” the state leader says. “We encourage churches, if
they have students who could be a part of this, that they apply for Metro-One.”
Chastain echoes the thought. “This has been outside my
comfort zone,” she admits. “(But) It has been well worth it.”