Acts 1:8 Materials and Displays Available

The Acts 1:8 Challenge offers free to churches, associations and state conventions a host of printed materials, which are featured for order on here.

You may not know that Acts 1:8 displays are available for loan as well for your upcoming mission event. Additionally, you may order your own customized Acts 1:8 Challenge display from our convenient Fed-Ex Kinkos store.

At right is an example of what's available in a pull-up style.

For more information about materials or displays contact the Acts 1:8 Challenge team.

Church Personalizes Missions with Great Commission Connection

Hayes Wicker, pastor of First Baptist Church, Naples, Fla., hopes change the way his church thinks about missions and missionaries by launching the “Great Commission Connection.”

The goal of GCC is to personalize missions and link missionaries and church members, while at the same time boosting support for Southern Baptists’ missions funding mechanism, according to Wicker.

Read the entire story from the Florida Baptist Witness.

NC Church Works the "Acts 1:8 Way"

Dudley Shoals Baptist Church in Granite Falls, N.C. goes with the "tried and true" when it comes to doing church.

Going with what works also is why Dudley Shoals Baptist Church gives 25 percent of its undesignated receipts to missions through the Cooperative Program, says pastor Ronald Winkler. "It still works."

"The Cooperative Program is the lifeblood of our church," Winkler said of the way state conventions in the Southern Baptist Convention work together the Acts 1:8 way -- supporting local, regional, national and international missions and ministries.

Read the entire story about Dudley Shoals Baptist Church on Baptist Press and visit its website www.dudleyshoalsbaptistchurch.org.

Podcast 58: A Church On Mission-Antioch

In this month's Acts 1:8 Challenge Podcast, Danny Sinquefield, pastor of Faith Baptist Church, Bartlett, Tenn., shares a message about the importance of the local church and its role in fulfilling the Great Commission.

A18C Podcast 58 - "A Church On Mission - Antioch," was recorded at the recent Acts 1:8 Summit held in Carson Springs, Tenn.

Download the Acts 1:8 Challenge Podcast today at www.ActsOne8.com/podcastfeed or search for the Acts 1:8 Challenge on iTunes. Direct link: http://tinyurl.com/ax44ak

Church Reaches Students Around Acts 1:8

As a part of their Acts 1:8 strategy to reach its community with the love of Jesus Christ, members of First Baptist Church in Gordo, Ala., assisted 60 underprivileged elementary school students start the school year with backpacks full of school supplies in eastern Alabama.

"We set the bar high, and we said we wanted to raise enough for 60 kids, but we actually got all 60 and had money left over," Singleton said. "We're trying to fulfill the Acts 1:8 mandate and fulfill the needs of our community."

Read the entire story on Baptist Press.

Acts 1:8 - "The bonfire around which the church gathers"

I have traveled throughout the Southern Baptist Convention this past year helping dozens of local churches, associations and state conventions to more fully implement and utilize the Acts 1:8 partnership. As a result, I am amazed and humbled by the renewed passion God is creating among His people for His mission.

The Acts 1:8 Challenge is unique among denominational emphases of recent years. From the beginning, the purpose of the Acts 1:8 Challenge initiative was to not to become a program, but a passion!

Pastors and other key leaders of Southern Baptist churches of all sizes are identifying a return to an Acts 1:8 style of missions as God's way of refocusing their ministries. The purpose of the church is for every member to be actively sharing Jesus Christ with a lost and dying world..."in Jerusalem, in all Judea, Samaria and to the ends of the earth!"

Versailles Baptist Church in Versailles, Ky., recently celebrated what God has done through its focus on Acts 1:8 since officially kicking off its Acts 1:8 Challenge emphasis in November 2007.

“Our missions giving has increased over 30 percent this past year,” said Michael Cabell, minister of discipleship and evangelism. “Our Lottie Moon giving was double what it was the year before. In 2007, we had 16 people go on short-term mission trips. In 2008, we had 138 people [go]…that’s an 870 percent increase!

“Acts 1:8 has made a marked difference in our church,” said Cabell. “It has become the ‘bonfire around which our church gathers.’”

Stories like that of Versailles Baptist are being repeated in many of the nearly 3,500 churches across the Southern Baptist Convention that have accepted the Acts 1:8 Challenge.

When a church focuses on the Acts 1:8 paradigm of missions, every aspect of the church—His church—has purpose. For example, no longer is a small group Bible study, music or youth ministry only for members who have been assimilated into the body of the church. Rather, these programs become strategic and significant outreach tools to share the message of Jesus Christ.

First Baptist Church, Star City, Ark., was founded in the 1800s and has a long history ministering to the rural community surrounding it.

During an Acts 1:8 conference hosted at the church for the Harmony Baptist Association, I visited briefly with the church's young pastor, Stephen Beavers.

As with many churches its age, tradition sometimes trumps new and innovative ministry to the community. But through the church’s focus on God’s mission and a commitment to the Acts 1:8 Challenge, Beavers said God continues to keep its evangelistic glow alive.

Recently, after the church’s youth pastor left, God used a mission trip to its Samaria to raise up a new leader for the church’s youth.

“While in Wichita, Kansas, where we were dong street witnessing, God ignited a passion for youth ministry in a man who was saved at our church,” said Beavers. “He personally led several people to the Lord.”

Today, the man serves as the church’s interim youth pastor.

“God has done a great work there,” said Beavers. “And it started during a missions trip experience. He is a real soul winner!”

At this time of year with the Christmas Season and New Year at hand, now is a great time for a church to consider "rebooting" its mission, so to speak, and install new Kingdom focus "software" and missional DNA that will fuel everything it is and does.

A commitment to making disciples of all nations by taking the Gospel to a church's community (Jerusalem), region/state (Judea), nation/continent (Samaria) and world (ends of the earth) clarifies purpose, simplifies and gives direction to a church’s earthly existence.

While it’s easy to get caught up in the excitement and pageantry of Christmas programs, churches with God’s mission at their core focus on the true reason for the season and how they share Christ in a world so desperately in need of Him.

Tim Yarbrough is a mission strategist and leader of the Church Relations Team at the North American Mission Board. He serves as the national coordinator of the Acts 1:8 Challenge initiative. More information about the Acts 1:8 Challenge is available at www.ActsOne8.com.