Blessed To Be A Part Of The Beulah Baptist Family

Pastor Brad Bessent, Pastor of Beulah Baptist Church in Hopkins, SC

"Pastor Brad is greeting two Bambara believers in a village in Mali. He teaches local pastors to be better leaders and provide discipleship training among their people".

Dear Readers,

Yesterday at church, I picked up a copy of the Spring 2009 issue of "To The Ends Of The Earth: International Mission Board, SBC". This post is from the article, Strategic Partnerships: at home and abroad, found in this publication.

I am very low tech and was unable to scan the text from the original article but I believe this story is important and needs to be shared so I am entering part of the article manually.

"It's an awe-inspiring argument for the power of partnership. Beulah Baptist is a 200-year-old church in Hopkins, S. C., that averages about 275 people on Sunday morning. In 2007, pastor Brad Bessent led Beulah's congregation to begin praying about partnering with the International Mission Board to adopt an unreached people group.

Bessent says the church soon recognized and answered God's call to take responsibility for spreading the Gospel among the Bambara, a West African people group at least 4 million strong.

Working together with IMB missionaries Steve and Susan Roach, Beulah set its sights on an unreached village of 3,000 Bambara in Mali. There were no evangelical churches in the village and no known Christians.

Short-term missions teams from Beulah began visiting the village every six weeks, openly sharing the Gospel with anyone willing to listen. At an average cost of $4,000 per volunteer, the trips weren't cheap, and the church didn't have money to fund them.

'God started this and He'll sustain it,' Bessent says. 'Our folks raise their own money. ... I haven't had anybody yet that the Lord didn't provide for.'

After nearly two years, Beulah Baptist has made more than 12 visits to the village and has witnessed more than 100 Bambara come to faith in Christ.

'I'm convinced that God called every one of us to fulfill the Great Commission,' Bessent says. 'If we don't get our churches mobilized there are going to be millions of folds that continue to die and spend eternity in hell because nobody told them about Jesus.' "

How awesome is this? Continuing missions dedicated to bring the Gospel to unreached people!!! I feel so blessed to be a part of the Beulah Baptist Church family.