PERSONALIZED MISSIONS DRIVES FIRST BAPTIST WOODSTOCK
by Erin Roach
BP News, TN
Posted on Sep 17, 2007
WOODSTOCK, Ga. (BP)–For Johnny Hunt, pastor of First Baptist Church
in Woodstock, Ga., missions is not a sideshow, it’s the main event.
"It’s not something we do ‘in addition.’ As a matter of fact, we
don’t even refer to it as missions, we call it ‘the mission,’" Hunt
said. "It’s just singular in that this is what the church is all
about — the Great Commission is getting the Gospel to the nations."
When Hunt became pastor of First Baptist Woodstock 21 years ago,
the church was 150 years old, gave $30,000 to missions each year,
and had no record of anyone ever going into missions through the
church’s ministry.
"It’s just where we were. But we were a five-star church. We had WMU,
we had Brotherhood, we took Lottie Moon, we took Annie Armstrong,"
he said. "But the thing is, if your church does that and nobody ever
produces, you’re out of business. I don’t care what you give. There’s
nobody there that needs it."
When Hunt traveled to Mombasa, Kenya, in 1989 and saw 5,000 people
a day baptized as revival swept that heavily Muslim city, his heart
was captured for missions and he wept as he reported to his church
how God had moved. From that point, he said, his congregation caught
the vision and became a church saturated in missions work.
Woodstock supports SBC missions through the Cooperative Program,
Southern Baptists’ unified giving plan for national and international
missions and ministries. In addition, the church has given millions
of dollars in designated missions contributions to SBC causes.
When asked what he would say to the pastor of a church of about
300 people struggling to decide where to give their missions money,
Hunt said, "I would say to that young pastor, ‘Lead your church to
be committed to the CP.’" He went on to indicate that if the pastor
wished to further personalize missions, he would invite him to go
with one of Woodstock’s Sunday School classes on a vision trip.
THE GLOBAL MISSION
During the past two decades, the Atlanta-area church has seen more
than 120 of its own families planted in positions around the world as
career missionaries, mostly with the International Mission Board. In a
good year, they’ll send 900 laypeople on mission assignments of varying
lengths to places where those individuals sense a personal call.
"What I’m trying to say is, it’s not something that every now and
then you can come and catch it, but it’s the DNA," Hunt said of
missions. "It’s the heartbeat."
The church has ongoing partnerships through the IMB focusing on
various unengaged people groups particularly in the 10/40 Window (the
area extending from West Africa to East Asia, from 10 degrees north
to 40 degrees north of the equator), and the World Impact Center at
First Baptist Woodstock is a state of the art training facility for
educating Southern Baptists about missions.
Through these partnerships, the church has been able to establish
vital relationships with indigenous churches and pastors in strategic
areas of the world.
"When we do these partnerships, we bring in the IMB person that
represents that part of the world, and we sign contracts before the
church," Hunt said. "So we really try to keep everything out before
the people so they just know that they’re as informed as they desire
to be. You can come into our kiosks, type in a country, and it will
tell you if we’re there, who the contact person is, and when the next
trip is going to be."
When Jerry Rankin, president of the International Mission Board,
wanted to involve more large churches, he called Hunt. Because of
Hunt’s network, he was able to gather up several megachurch pastors
and take them overseas for a vision trip. Some of those pastors saw
what was possible, and now their churches are heavily involved in
spreading the Gospel and planting churches instead of simply writing
checks with no actions attached.
First Baptist Woodstock recently adopted the Kurds, the largest
unreached people group without a homeland, and now about 15 Sunday
School classes are taking mission trips to Iran, Iraq, Syria, Lebanon
and Armenia specifically to reach the Kurdish people with the Gospel
of Jesus Christ and help start indigenous churches, Hunt said.
One Sunday School class has developed a special interest in the Kurds
of Armenia, he said, so the class is financing the translation of
the New Testament for the Kurdish people in that country.
"Sometimes, in my Sunday School class, they’ll pass the hat three
times to underwrite missions work," Hunt said.
THE NATIONAL MISSION
First Baptist Woodstock is not merely looking to minister
overseas. Church members also are working with Kurds who live in the
Atlanta area.
"We think it’s a little hypocritical to be so engaged with the Turks
or the Kurds in Turkey and you travel and raise all that money to go
there and you don’t even notice them when there are tens of thousands
in your own country," he said.
The church also has focused its attention on some of the major
metropolitan areas of the United States.
This year they’re shepherding 24 church plants with an average combined
weekly attendance of 2,100 from New York to Las Vegas.
"If we ever reach America, we will have to first of all reach our
major cities. You can’t do it rural," Hunt said. "The majority of
Southern Baptist churches are rural, but the majority of our people
live in urban and suburban areas."
Hunt noted that the church plants have strong personal connections
to First Baptist Woodstock.
"Several of these pastors were saved in this church, baptized in this
church, raised in this church, sent out to be educated by this church,
and now they’re one of our church planters," he said.
When Hurricane Katrina hit the Gulf Coast, Hunt said church members
wore the staff out by calling to ask, "What are we going to do?" They
badly wanted to help the victims, and they were eager for guidance,
Hunt said. So the following Sunday, he wrote a check and urged members
to join him in giving money for relief efforts.
"I said, ‘We don’t know what all we’re going to do yet, but we
know that there are more needs than we’re going to be able to deal
with.’ We gave around $250,000 in cash, unannounced, for an offering,"
Hunt recounted.
At Thanksgiving that year, Hunt’s family decided to give their holiday
week to helping those who were suffering after the hurricane. When
church members heard about their plans, 250 laypeople joined them on
a trip to Biloxi, Miss., where they gave out 20,000 turkeys.
THE REGIONAL MISSION
First Baptist Woodstock also is focusing heavy resources on reaching
its own Jerusalem and Judea.
Georgia’s population, for instance, is just under 9 million people,
but 5 million are in the Atlanta metroplex. According to the church’s
literature, Woodstock is sponsoring or partnering with seven mission
churches in its own state of Georgia.
"You can’t reach the state without reaching Atlanta," Hunt said. "In
a 35-mile radius of our church, there are more people in our mission
churches than there are on this campus on Sunday morning."
Each Thursday, more than 40 volunteers from the church lead what they
call "Church on the Street," where as many as 600 people struggling
with poverty are given blankets, a warm meal and a Gospel presentation.
First Baptist Woodstock has the largest food and clothing ministry
around, and the majority of people who visit the church for assistance
are Hispanic, Hunt said. The church has hired people from Argentina,
Costa Rica and Ecuador to work in that ministry, reaching out to
their own ethnic groups.
Hunt indicated that the people who come for assistance are required
to make an appointment.
"So instead of us being a social service where we go out and feel
good about it, they come in 30 minutes early and they sit down,
and we tell them why we do it and we give them the Gospel," Hunt said.
A Spanish church on campus averages 250 in attendance each week,
and about the same number of people participates in an ESL program,
representing more than 20 countries at any given meeting.
Another popular ministry of the church is the Upward Basketball
program in Clarkston, Ga., a community with a large population of
refugees from other countries including Sudan, Somalia and Afghanistan.
"If we blindfolded you and took you there today, you would think you
were in Iraq," Hunt said, based on the ethnic stores, food from other
cultures, the abundance of mosques and people in traditional dress.
For seven years, First Baptist Woodstock has taught basketball to
about 300 refugee children a year, all the time modeling the love of
Christ and presenting the Gospel message.
THE PASTORAL MISSION
Not only has Johnny Hunt led First Baptist Woodstock to reach the
lost locally, nationally and internationally, he has led the church
to offer special assistance to those in ministry.
The City of Refuge is a restoration ministry at the church, and it
entails giving pastors and other ministers a safe haven to recuperate
after a significant setback.
"Say a pastor gets dismissed, or while he’s in ministry he starts
having trouble with his children, he has a moral failure, financial
impropriety, just gets beat up and it hurts his marriage and all,"
Hunt said. "We bring them in. We give them a place to live and pay
their bills and put them in professional counseling."
In about eight years since starting the program, about 300 families
have been ministered to in the City of Refuge, Hunt said.
Through the Timothy Barnabas Ministry, Hunt has trained thousands
of pastors in the United States and other countries. One of the most
exciting aspects of the program is that most of the other nations are
third world countries where people are eager to learn how to minister.
FULL CIRCLE
These ministry emphases have empowered First Baptist Woodstock to
complete the mission cycle, helping members to see and reach beyond
their own geographical and cultural boundaries.
"We’ll have our first Hispanic team that we’ve been training for many
years launch out into the 10/40 Window to Central Asia next year," Hunt
said. "If all goes well, we may have an Argentine engaging the Kurds."
And with that kind of enthusiasm for accomplishing the Great Commission
using all types of people and methods, First Baptist Woodstock hopes
to inspire others toward finishing the task.
–30– Erin Roach is a staff writer for Baptist Press. This
article first appeared in SBC Life, journal of the Southern Baptist
Convention’s Executive Committee.