Teaming Up
Growing into New Places
If you haven’t already noticed, General Assembly will convene in a new place this year! For the first time in the nearly four decades of our Fellowship’s life and witness, we will gather this summer in St. Louis. We are so grateful for Cooperative Baptists in our Heartland region who will host us, and we look forward to the remarkable opportunities that this new location will offer. Of course, we are also eager for the times of worship we will share, important conversations that will take place, the renewal of old friendships, the creation of new ones and the space to celebrate all that God is doing in our congregations and through the ministries of our Fellowship.
It is appropriate that we hold our assembly in a new place, because our Fellowship will be gathering in a very different season. We are not the same Fellowship that gathered just before the pandemic, much less those that assembled in our earliest years. We have come through significant challenges in our culture and changes in our congregational life. But God is at work among us doing a new thing. There are signs of growth and new opportunity all around our life together. If you are present this summer, you’ll see all the ways our denominational community is growing. We are increasingly diverse geographically, generationally, racially and theologically. We are finding new ways to offer witness to Christ’s power in our dangerously polarized world.
The growth in our Fellowship doesn’t just mean we look different; it means we are being invited into an expanding community of Christ-followers in which we can be equipped for bold faithfulness so that we are transformed and can participate in Christ’s transformation of the world. You will encounter pastors, lay leaders, field personnel and chaplains who are living out Christ’s mission in courageous and beautiful ways that will inspire you and open your eyes to even more ways God wants to be at work in you and your congregation.
A
PAUL BAXLEY is Executive Coordinator of the Cooperative Baptist Fellowship.
More than ever, our gatherings are an experience of the deepest kind of fellowship—not a mere social experience but a partnership in the Gospel—what the Apostle Paul described as koinonia, the experience of being drawn together into a work that does not come from us or depend on us, but in which we participate and by which we are changed.
I hope you will register for General Assembly and make plans to attend. Being together for those days is a remarkable experience. Whether this is your first assembly, or you have come many times, we will be eager to welcome you and discover even deeper connections in life, faith and ministry. But whether you are able to join us or not, I want you to know that this is an incredibly important moment for our community of congregations, field personnel, chaplains, pastoral counselors and ministry partners. The uniqueness of our denominational community is increasingly clear and the importance of the calling we have received is incredibly urgent.
As you read this edition of fellowship! magazine, you will see vivid examples of the ways Christ is at work among us. I hope you sense a clear calling to a deeper engagement in our Fellowship. What leadership can you and your congregation offer to our life together? What ministry have you developed from which we can learn? How might you engage more deeply with the work of one of our field personnel around the world? How can you benefit from our growing efforts to help congregations thrive? How can you or your congregation participate more generously in funding the work we are called to do together?
Today, I write both to invite you to our 2025 General Assembly, June 24-26, as we gather in a new place, but I also want to invite you to a deeper participation in our life together. God is seeking to do a new thing among us and to live it most fully all of us need one another more than ever, and the world, more than ever, needs the kind of witness we can offer together.
Fellowship! is published 4 times a year in September (Fall), December (Winter), March (Spring), June (Summer) by the Cooperative Baptist Fellowship Inc., 160 Clairemont Avenue, Suite 300, Decatur, GA 30030. Periodicals postage paid at Decatur, GA, and additional offices. USPS #015-625.
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8 COOPERATIVE BAPTIST LEADERS REMEMBER
JIMMY CARTER
By Aaron Weaver
12
CHRISTIAN EDUCATORS CONFERENCE
By Alicia Seruyange
CBF JOINS LEGAL ACTION
CBF statement on court order protecting houses of worship
By CBF Communications
18 KAREN ALFORD TEAMS UP TO HEAL WOUNDS AND CHANGE LIVES IN TOGO
By Marv Knox
22 BRINGING LIFE INTO THE WORLD
Dela’s journey to become a midwife in Togo By Grayson
Hester
24
CALLED IN CONTEXT
“Nontraditional” ministry path led Moyer to Second Story and First Baptist Columbus
By Marv Knox
28
BEHOLD…A NEW JOURNEY
Pilar’s story of survival, resilience and hope By Grayson Hester
30 HE AQUÍ... UN NUEVO CAMINO
La historia de supervivencia, resistencia y esperanza de Pilar
Por Grayson Hester
FROM THE EDITOR
We are delighted to share with you the spring 2025 issue of fellowship! magazine—a rich collection of news, stories, photos and videos from across the Cooperative Baptist Fellowship that reflect the mission and ministry of our denominational community.
In this issue, we highlight the inspiring ministry of CBF field personnel Karen Alford and her life-changing medical work in Togo (pp. 18-21), as well as the journey of Dela, a promising midwife in training (pp. 22-23). You’ll read a heartfelt tribute to President Jimmy Carter as Cooperative Baptist leaders remembered his legacy on the National Day of Mourning (pp. 8-9).
Look for highlights from the Christian Educators Conference held in Decatur, Ga., where ministers came together for learning, connection and worship (pp. 12-13). Marv Knox highlights CBF’s Called in Context initiative and introduces us to Nico Moyer, a U.S. Army veteran whose nontraditional path led him to ministry and leadership at First Baptist Church, Columbus, Ga. (pp. 24-27). Grayson Hester brings us the powerful story of Pilar, a Venezuelan migrant whose journey of survival has become a ministry of advocacy and hospitality (pp. 28-31).
You’ll also find details for this year’s General Assembly (pp. 4-5). For the first time, we’ll gather in St. Louis—so make plans to join us June 24-27 for a time of worship, learning and connection. Register today at www.cbf.net/assembly.
We hope this issue serves as both an informative and inspiring resource for the spring season!
AARON WEAVER is the Editor of fellowship! Connect with him at aweaver@cbf.net
LAUREN LAMB is the Associate Editor of fellowship! Connect with her at llamb@cbf.net
You’re no longer strangers or outsiders. You belong here, with as much right to the name Christian as anyone. God is building a home. He’s using us all— irrespective of how we got here—in what he is building. He used the apostles and prophets for the foundation. Now he’s using you, fitting you in brick by brick, stone by stone, with Christ Jesus as the cornerstone that holds all the parts together. We see it taking shape day after day—a holy temple built by God, all of us built into it, a temple in which God is quite at home.
Ephesians 2:19-22 MSG
JUNE
24-26, 2025
ST. LOUIS J IN US
New City. New Schedule. Renewed Connection.
In a year that feels more polarized than ever before, we want to be a place where everyone is not just welcome in our communities but feels a deep sense of belonging in our Fellowship.
That’s why we’re gathering this June to reflect on what radical hospitality can look like through worship, learning and connection. We’ll be embracing the scriptural call that we are no longer strangers, but fellow citizens and members of God’s household.
You’re invited to be a part as we explore a new city, new schedule and renewed connection. Meet us in St. Louis!
HEY, BATTER BATTER!
We’ve got lots of fun in store for this year’s General Assembly! Tickets are available for registrants to join us at the Cubs vs. Cardinals game on Wednesday, June 25.
Take advantage of our group rate and register today to grab your tickets and spend an evening with hundreds of your CBF friends in the outfield of legendary Busch Stadium.
During the week of the General Assembly, you can earn continuing education units as well as a 3-year certification in Mental Health First Aid. You can engage in a leadership conversation with author and political scientist Ryan Burge. You can find your center and breathe deeply through You Belong Here: Body & Breath and Sound & Soul. You can get out and about in St. Louis through a group scavenger hunt or with a Thriving Excursion to talk strategy, leadership and chess.
Deborah Garrard Leader -
Charles Goodman, Jr.
Melissa Hatfield
Robert P. Jones
Colin Kroll Facilitator - Mental Health First Aid Training
Paul Raushenbush Keynote Speaker - AWAB & BNG Breakfast
MISSION BITES
SAVING SEEDS
By Jessica Hearne
As our Urban Farm leaders are developing their skills in the garden, I find that they are also pushing me to develop new gardening skills.
This season, “B.” especially has been challenging me to think about new questions and new methods. In addition to managing a garden bed at our Urban Farm, “B.” has a bucket garden in her front yard, where she has been growing tomatoes, cucumbers, peppers and cabbages.
Around mid-summer this year, “B.” started texting me about saving seeds. “If we can save our own seeds for next year, then that’s even less we have to buy.” Our focus on making gardening affordable and accessible had really inspired her! Of course, “B.” was right. I have had success with saving dry seeds like okra, beans and certain flowers, but I began looking up how to save other kinds of seeds with her questions to guide me.
We learned that watermelons have to be allowed to overripen on the vine, and so a grocery store melon wouldn’t have viable seeds. We also learned about allowing tomato seeds to ferment in the tomato pulp for a few days before drying them out, and we used our research to save our tomato seeds for the first time.
Jessica Hearne is CBF field personnel in Danville, Va.
TURNING POINT IN BALI
By Jonathan Bailey
I met Liz in Bali in 2018. A dancer from Mexico, she came to study Balinese dance. I asked Liz to perform a traditional dance called Condong for our upcoming Christmas celebration, and she agreed. The day came for the celebration, and Liz danced beautifully. She left Bali the following summer having grown a bit as a dancer and artist. Five years ago, Liz told me she was returning to Bali, this time for a longer stint. I was thrilled. However, Liz hadn’t danced for a long time. When we started a new music project last fall, I invited Liz to join as a contemporary dancer. Again, she agreed although she’d not danced in several years. Over the course of two months, she prepared under the direction of our dramaturgist, Jelena, from Serbia who would take Liz on an inward journey that would be the foundation of her movement in the performance. It was a process that Liz would describe later as a turning point for her. It wasn’t just a return to the dance that she loved, but something new was born in her that would be a needed point of strength in the difficult days that followed.
Jonathan Bailey is a Cooperative Baptist Fellowship field personnel serving a network of artists and communities in Bali, Indonesia.
Urban Farm provides hundreds of pounds of fresh produce every year to people who live in the food desert. In Danville, one in five people live with food insecurity.
Bailey partners with PosKo•Studio in Bali to help artists worldwide serve as the hands and feet of Jesus by supporting their professional and spiritual needs. He also works alongside PosKo•Studio to create live and recorded performances that are posted digitally.
PORAKA: A PLACE OF HOPE
By Alicia Lee
We are honored to partner with Poraka, a group home for adults with developmental delays. Poraka is more than a group home, it is a beloved community of home, and all who enter are transformed. This is true for the residents who call Poraka home, many of whom lived in state-run institutions. It is also true for us and our partners from the United States. Our church partners from the U.S. have come year after year to participate in the work of Poraka, and it is always everyone’s favorite part of their visit. When you visit Poraka, you are greeted with infectious smiles, warm hugs and joyous laughter. You can’t help but feel “at home” at Poraka!
Alicia Lee and her husband, Jeff, serve as CBF field personnel in Skopje, Republic of North Macedonia, through holistic, relational and healing ministries among the ethnic groups of Skopje.
FOLLOWING THE SPIRIT
By Christine
Marinay—it’s a word I’ve recently learned well in Arabic; it means flexible.
What does it mean to be flexible, to pivot and change directions when things don’t go as planned? What does it look like to let God lead? To trust that the Spirit will show us what is ours to do if we slow down long enough to listen? What does bearing witness or being the presence of Christ mean from afar?
For now, it looks like opening your home to a family fleeing from the violence of war, to provide a place of refuge and rest. It looks like blankets and pillows and hot meals, medical care, baby formula, rain coats, a listening ear, respite for the caretakers.
It looks like hosting other displaced expats who only need places of refuge and rest. It looks like sending money, equipping and empowering someone else to lead in your absence, encouraging them to find their place and voice instead of relying on mine.
It looks like learning to see anew the face of God in unexpected places, to sense the nudging of the Spirit in directions opposite the ones you thought you’d be walking. It means starting over. Again. An invitation to experience God afresh if we’ll receive it as such.
It’s a reminder that we aren’t in control like we assume. And it’s a reminder that God knows what we need better than we do. Can we learn to trust that?
It means remembering and reminding ourselves repeatedly that wherever we go, wherever we find ourselves, regardless of how we got there, God is with us.
Christine is a Cooperative Baptist Fellowship field personnel serving regionally across Africa and the Middle East where she provides trauma care to individuals who have experienced the violence of war and migration.
Christine (right) is an ordained Baptist minister and a licensed social worker. Alongside providing direct treatment and care, she collaborates with local and international partners through training and education to enhance capacity for more sustainable, long-term care.
In 2010, the Lees formed a partnership with the Food Bank of Macedonia to combat food insecurity and reduce hunger across North Macedonia. This collaboration has resulted in the distribution of more than 30 tons of food.
On a National Day of Mourning, Cooperative Baptist leaders remember President Jimmy Carter
By Aaron Weaver
Asthe country
observed Jan. 9 as a National Day of Mourning in honor of former President Jimmy Carter, Cooperative Baptist leaders reflected on the life and legacy of the “most famous Baptist in the world” who helped galvanize the establishment of CBF just over 30 years ago.
“President Carter was a man of deep faith, persistent integrity and courageous vision,” said CBF Executive Coordinator Paul Baxley. “He gave his presidency and many years after to the quest for lasting peace, the pursuit of genuine racial justice, faithful environmental stewardship and advocacy for human rights. He was an active Baptist layman, deeply invested in his beloved Maranatha Baptist Church in Plains, but also in Northside Drive Baptist Church in Atlanta and in the First Baptist Church of the City of Washington, D.C.”
Baxley represented CBF at the memorial service for President Carter at the National Cathedral in Washington, D.C.
“Across his life, President Carter made teaching Sunday school and participating in worship a high priority and in doing so modeled the most beautiful synergy between deep faith and compelling public leadership,” Baxley continued. “As Cooperative Baptists, we not only celebrate his defining commitments and his abiding love of congregational life, we are also stronger today because of the leadership he offered in our earliest years. President Carter was not only a remarkable leader in the world, he invested himself in our Baptist community and for him we thank God.”
Just two years after the founding of the Cooperative Baptist Fellowship, Carter delivered the keynote address at the 1993 General Assembly in Birmingham, Ala., announcing that he and wife Rosalynn, the former First Lady, had “found a home” in the new Fellowship.
“In the Cooperative Baptist Fellowship, my wife and I have found a home,” Carter told the 5,000 attendees.
Carter challenged Cooperative Baptists to support women in ministry, racial reconciliation and inclusion, ecumenical cooperation and work to address global poverty.
“I pray to God that, as Rosalynn and I cast our lot for the rest of our lives with this fellowship, we could be part of a transcendent movement—no matter how large in number—constantly analyzing what we do as measured by the standards of Jesus…dedicated to service of others as the best way to spread the gospel of Christ.”
Carter also praised CBF for its stands in support of Baptist principles such as the autonomy of the local church, church-state separation and the priesthood of all believers.
“When there is a definition of what is a proper person, a proper Baptist, a proper American, we are violating the basic principles of what we believe,” he said. “When we enforce uniformity on other people, it saps their freedom.”
Carter again addressed the General Assembly in June 2001 before a record crowd of 8,100 in celebration of CBF’s 10th anniversary, urging Cooperative Baptists to forget the past and form new partnerships.
“It’s time for us to get together in a spirit of love” to maximize worldwide mission efforts, he said. “I think the time has come for CBF maybe to take the leadership and for traditional Baptists to begin to reach out more aggressively to one another.”
In 2007, Carter convened leaders from 30 Baptist organizations representing more than 20 million Baptists to publicly announce plans for a “Celebration of a New Baptist Covenant”—a multi-racial network that would become centered around local ministry action.
The following year, more than 15,000 Baptists gathered in Atlanta for the first-ever New Baptist Covenant meeting to break down barriers of race, theology and geography among Baptists to fulfill
Jesus’ vision of transformation in Luke 4 to proclaim the Good News and set the oppressed free.
In subsequent years, the New Baptist Covenant continued its work creating inclusive Baptist communities across the country and forming shared “covenant of action” projects focused on addressing low literacy rates, childhood hunger, poverty, predatory lending and other social concerns.
Former CBF Executive Coordinator Daniel Vestal praised Carter as a “faithful follower of Jesus Christ, an exemplar of moral integrity and a fierce advocate for social justice.”
“Jimmy Carter lived among us as an unapologetic churchman, an honest public servant and a devoted husband. He was a student and teacher of Scripture, a champion of human rights and a global peacemaker,” said Vestal, who led the Fellowship from 1996-2012.
“President Carter’s influence within the Baptist family has been immeasurable. He is the most famous Baptist in the world; and unknown to many, was tireless in efforts to foster reconciliation among Baptists and mobilize them for ministry. I am deeply grateful to God for his life and witness.”
Suzii Paynter March, who served as CBF executive coordinator from 2013-2019, shared a memory of visiting Maranatha Baptist Church in Plains, Ga., to attend Carter’s Sunday school class and engage with the church leadership.
“One Sunday, at the close of his class teaching, President Carter asked me to pray and sent a microphone passed through pews of people and into my hand,” she recalled. “The audience sat silently with bowed heads. Before bowing, I looked at President Carter’s face and our eyes met for a long moment. I believe the Holy Spirit intervened to highlight our common faith and shared commitments. The spiritual connection was a moment of tender intimacy in Christ, not as President or as Baptist, but as believers sincerely seeking Christ’s way.”
Pat Anderson, who served as interim executive coordinator of CBF from 2012-2013, shared memories of co-coordinating the 1993 General Assembly in Birmingham, Ala., and helping to organize the Carters’ travel and visit—transportation made possible by Baptist lay leader John Baugh.
Anderson, who had visited China multiple times on behalf of CBF Global Missions, later helped organize President Carter’s presence and participation at the opening ceremony of the China Bible Ministry Exhibition in 2006 at Second-Ponce de Leon Baptist Church in Atlanta and discussions with China Christian Council (CCC) leaders. Anderson also had the opportunity to take the CCC delegation to Plains to attend President Carter’s Sunday school class at Maranatha Baptist Church.
“We were grandly introduced to the congregation and President Carter promoted the China Bible exhibition,” Anderson said. “After church and the group photo with the Carters, we then went to the local restaurant for lunch. The drive back to Atlanta was joyful and filled with memories for all of us.”
Walter “Buddy” Shurden, retired church history professor at Mercer University, reflected on seeking the Carters’ approval to name a special CBF General Assembly offering in their honor.
“PRESIDENT CARTER WAS NOT ONLY A REMARKABLE LEADER IN THE WORLD, HE INVESTED HIMSELF IN OUR BAPTIST COMMUNITY AND FOR HIM WE THANK GOD.”
“I was always impressed by the way President Carter included Mrs. Carter by asking her advice,” he said. “When CBF leadership agreed to name a special offering the ‘Jimmy and Rosalynn Carter Offering for Religious Liberty and Human Rights,’ a group of us went to Plains to ask the President’s permission to use their name. I remember that Hardy Clemons, Daniel Vestal and I, among others, were in the group that met in the Carters’ modest living room. After telling the President why we were there and what we wanted, he said, ‘Well, I will first have to ask Rosalynn what she thinks, and I will get back to you after I talk with her. He got back to us with the permission to proceed!”
The five-year special offering collected more than $45,000 in its inaugural year, with funds being allocated in support of the Baptist World Alliance and CBF Global Missions initiatives in Thailand and Morocco among refugee organizations.
Pam Durso, president of Central Baptist Theological Seminary, reflected on serving on the New Baptist Covenant task force from 2013-2015 and having opportunities to participate in meetings alongside Carter.
“In early January 2015, I sat in a room at the Carter Center with seven or eight other task force members,” Durso said. “We each gave him a report on the work being done. President Carter listened intently, asked probing questions and took no notes. Ten minutes after our meeting, he stood at the podium for a press conference, and in a crowded room with reporters and New Baptist Covenant participants, he summed up our reports, offering both the details we had shared and beautifully weaving our reports into a narrative that honestly made our efforts sound more extraordinary than they were.”
Jeremy Shoulta, who previously served as pastor at Maranatha Baptist Church in Plains, Ga., raised “presence” as one of Carter’s greatest gifts.
“His presence amongst family and friends, church and community, and the sick and marginalized validated the existence of countless individuals who might otherwise be ignored or maligned,” said Shoulta, senior pastor of First Baptist Church, Gainesville, Ga. “President Carter’s presence sowed seeds of love and peace from the smallest venues to international settings.”
Julie Pennington-Russell, senior pastor of First Baptist Church of the City of Washington, D.C., said that FBC was “blessed to include Jimmy and Rosalynn Carter as active members during his presidency.”
“President Carter’s teaching inspired the hearts and minds of those in our congregation and beyond. His later work for peace and justice flowed from the person he was at his core: a follower of Christ,” Pennington-Russell emphasized. “Embodying the way of Jesus, Jimmy Carter’s life was characterized by honesty, peacemaking, justice, simplicity, integrity, compassion and love.”
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By Alisha Seruyange
These are strange times. The pace of life alone, not to mention the added layers of catastrophe and natural disasters, could leave anyone in a tailspin. Church life, too, seems to be shifting. With church programming wavering and congregational engagement levels unsteady, a group of CBF ministry network representatives (Children, Youth, College and Young Adults networks) came together to create a new conference. The Christian Educators Conference (CEC) was born to bring Baptist ministers together for professional learning in topics impacting their ministries.
When more than 90 ministers from across CBF gathered in Decatur, Ga., on February 4-7, the room felt alive. The pre-conference offering was an intensive six-hour course in Youth Mental Health First Aid facilitated by our own young adult ministries manager, Colin Kroll. Participants at CEC were able to choose among 12 different sessions like worship as racial reconciliation, thriving in ministry and Godly Play. The Church Benefits Board was on deck with a session on what isn’t taught about finance in seminary but when the whole group gathered, we focused on the stories that shape us in ministry and life. With guests Zak Foster and Jason Kirk, we listened to the ways community, storytelling and the church had shaped and nurtured them. We concluded our group time with a conversation between CBF Congregational Ministries Coordinator Brian Foreman, and Rev. Dr. Will Brown. We explored what pastoral care response in Christian ministry looks like when providing care for families navigating sexual identity, expression and faith formation.
Before scurrying back to the rush of packed schedules, we closed with the best kind of worship service—the kind in which our participants didn’t have to plan, promote or preach. In our last minutes sitting together in a peaceful chapel, we were reminded that it is in being threaded together through Baptist leadership in faithful pursuit of how to show up with the Gospel that will get us through whatever comes next.
Colin Kroll (left), young adult ministries manager, taught a pre-conference class so people could be certified in Youth Mental Health First Aid.
Chris Cherry, Dane Jackson, Caitie Jackson and Alisha Seruyange at the welcome reception.
Kelly Adams (above), director of clergy support ecosystem, presented the Thriving Congregations’ Five Traits that equip congregational leaders to help their congregations thrive in many ways.
Pamela Duncan (left), minister to youth and families at North Haven Church in Norman, Okla., and worship leader Aimee Mann (right) after a worship session.
CBF STATEMENT ON COURT ORDER
BLOCKING ICE ENFORCEMENT AT HOUSES OF WORSHIP
CBF Executive Coordinator Paul Baxley released the following statement on February 24 regarding a court ruling blocking ICE enforcement in houses of worship.
“Today’s ruling is a powerful validation of the values that have defined the Cooperative Baptist Fellowship—a steadfast commitment to religious liberty, local church autonomy, and the clear separation of church and state. For decades, our congregations have faithfully engaged in ministry among immigrants and refugees, offering a bold and courageous witness to the remarkable and relentless love of Christ. This decision reinforces our effort to restore the sensitive location protections that have allowed our congregations to worship and minister freely. While our work continues, we celebrate this victory as a testament to the bold faith that rises from freedom rather than coercion.”
WHAT DID THE COURT DO?
• The U.S. District Court of Maryland’s ruling only applies to the named plaintiffs in the lawsuit. This includes all CBF partner churches, the Sikh Temple Sacramento and six Quaker Meetings.
• The ruling blocks ICE (and all Department of Homeland Security agents) from entering houses of worship to carry out enforcement operations unless they have first obtained a warrant signed by a judge or there are exigent circumstances.
• This decision effectively restores the sensitive location policy that had been revoked by the interim secretary of DHS, ensuring that houses of worship remain free from warrantless government raids.
WHAT DOES IT MEAN?
• Restoration of Protections: Our congregations can now continue to worship and minister without the fear of unexpected enforcement actions.
• Affirmation of Core Values: The ruling validates our longstanding commitment
to religious liberty, local church autonomy, and the separation of church and state.
• Support for Ministry: It safeguards our ability to serve immigrant and refugee communities effectively, reinforcing the bold and courageous witness that has defined our mission.
WHAT ARE CBF CHURCHES PROTECTED?
• CBF partner congregations can identify themselves as protected by the injunction by posting the following language at all entrances of the church:
[Name of Church] is part of the Cooperative Baptist Fellowship (CBF). Pursuant to a court order from the U.S. District Court of Maryland entered on February 24, 2025, Department of Homeland Security including ICE and CBP must treat our church as a “sensitive location” under the DHS Memorandum of October 27, 2021.
By CBF Communications
• Download posters from CBF to use at each entrance of your church. Find posters at www.cbf.net/sensitivelocation-poster
KEY POINTS TO EMPHASIZE
• The ruling restores essential protections for our houses of worship.
• It reflects our unwavering commitment to our founding values.
• Immigrants and refugees are vital members of our beloved community and the larger church of Jesus Christ. Our religious freedom is lessened when immigrant communities are discouraged from participating in worship and participating in our ministries. We’ve been committed to ministry among immigrants and refugees from the beginning in our global mission engagement and in the mission commitments of our partner congregations.
• This ruling came after CBF joined a lawsuit to halt immigration authorities from enforcing in and near houses of worship and religious gatherings and to restore a decades long policy that protects the values of religious liberty. This policy was abruptly reversed recently by the Department of Homeland Security. Restoring it would provide immediate relief to CBF partner congregations who are called to engage in ministry with immigrants and refugees.
Read more online at www.cbf.net/ruling
WHY DID CBF JOIN IN THIS LEGAL ACTION?
CBF Executive Coordinator Paul Baxley explained in a statement that CBF’s participation in the lawsuit was part of its commitment to religious freedom and ministry with immigrants and refugees.
“From our very beginnings in 1991, the Cooperative Baptist Fellowship has been a community of congregations and individuals deeply committed to religious liberty, local church autonomy and churchstate separation. We have held these convictions consistently and have done so amid a wide diversity of theological positions, worship practices, missional emphases, geographic settings and even heart languages. Our congregations overwhelmingly continue to express these commitments that have been core to our Fellowship’s life since its inception to the present.
Cooperative Baptists have been committed to ministry among immigrants and refugees from the beginning of our participation in Christ’s mission in the United States and around the world. This is not a new commitment for us—it has been faithfully present in our global mission engagement and in the mission engagement of our partner congregations.
Because of these deep, long-standing convictions and commitments, CBF has joined others in taking legal action with the narrow focus of seeking a restoration of sensitive location status that has existed for houses of worship for almost as long as our Fellowship has existed, through both Republican and Democratic administrations.
The recent revocation of the sensitive location status is already harming the ministries of many of our congregations, the work of our field personnel and the life of our Fellowship.
As Baptists, despite our many differences on theology and political preference, we have stood
steadfast for centuries in the belief that local congregations should be free to carry out their mission as guided by the Holy Spirit.
As a Fellowship, we have experienced a clear and unmistakable calling to be a community that is more racially, ethnically, generationally and geographically diverse as we believe this reflects the mission of God and the character of Jesus. The revocation of sensitive location status for houses of worship has also harmed our capacity to live into that divine calling.
Because the sensitive location policy was abruptly reversed by the Department of Homeland Security and because there is urgency in seeking relief and restoration to what previously existed, legal intervention is our best path.
A primary reason for our joining this legal action is a hope that DHS’s abrupt policy reversal will be blocked and our partner congregations will experience relief needed to freely associate and worship. We also believe that the First Amendment of the United States Constitution and the Religious Freedom Restoration Act grant clear legal warrant for our action.
In joining this effort, we do not represent that Cooperative Baptists share the same political views or affiliate with a particular political party. Our Fellowship is unique because we are politically, theologically, racially, ethnically and generationally diverse. We are bound together by a strong commitment to the Lordship of Jesus and the time-tested experience that the boldest faith, whether in the lives of individuals or congregations, must rise from freedom and not coercion.”
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‘LONE RANGER’ KAREN ALFORD TEAMS UP TO HEAL WOUNDS AND CHANGE LIVES IN TOGO
Healing
wounds is about the easiest part of Karen Alford’s job. Convincing people who believe in voodoo to trust a nurse who practices Western medicine is another matter.
Alford is a Cooperative Baptist Fellowship field personnel in Togo, a narrow slice of a country in West Africa. She’s a family nurse practitioner who runs a wound-care clinic in Vogan, a farming village “in the middle of nowhere.”
A 90-something year-old woman with a thumb wound represents what she’s up against. A friend of a friend asked Alford to travel into the countryside to talk to the woman—his grandmother—and help heal her wound, which had opened to the bone.
“This woman lives in a remote, simple village. She’s never had formal schooling. She practices voodoo. She’s elderly, stubborn, ornery and determined to fight,” Alford reported. “She would not let me touch her. She was afraid I would give her the COVID-19 vaccine, and it was going to kill her.”
No matter that Alford didn’t have the COVID-19 vaccine; the woman would not take Western medicine.
So, Alford leaned into a truth that has shaped her long ministry: Medicine can heal wounds, but relationships change hearts.
By Marv Knox
Alford spent three hours patiently negotiating what the woman would be willing to do apart from receiving medicine. “She finally agreed to soak her thumb in warm water with laundry detergent twice a day,” Alford said. “She also agreed to apply an herb she was using, but also to apply wild daisy, an herb we found in her compound.” No Western medicine.
Two weeks later, the wound was 50 percent better. “The woman was really happy and kept saying, ‘Thanks be to the ancestors.’ Voodoo people believe ancestors heal them,” Alford recalled. “I was saying, ‘Thanks be to God,’ and she said, ‘No, it’s thanks be to the ancestors.’
“So, I said: ‘Well, I’m Christian, so you can thank your ancestors, and I’ll thank God,’ and she said, ‘OK; fine.’”
Alford promised to return in two weeks and pledged to keep praying to God. When she came back, the woman told her: “I know you love me. You would not have continued to help me if you did not love me.”
“She showed me her thumb, and it was healed,” Alford said. “I was so glad it healed, and she was so happy. When I got ready to leave, she said, ‘Thanks be to God!’”
Alford’s journey to Togo—and particularly to love all kinds of people in Jesus’ name—started long ago.
She grew up in Oregon, attending church and loving nature. Her passion for nature led her to major in wildlife biology at the University of Montana. Then she joined the Peace Corps, moved to North Africa and participated in Morocco’s version of the Forest Service. Alford lived in a remote village with a regional indigenous group, the Berbers. She was only the second white person they had seen.
“They were still living like they lived 500 years ago,” she said. “We washed our clothes in the river. I lived in a loft over a barn—dirt floor, no electricity, no running water. And I fell in love with the people. As much as I loved my job, it was the first time people were actually more interesting to me than wildlife.”
When her Peace Corps assignment ended, Alford vowed to return to Morocco as a doctor, so she could help the Berber people.
She came back to the United States, to Tampa, Fla., to attend medical school and learned the best path to provide medical care in the Third World was to become a nurse practitioner. With that training, she could set broken bones, suture wounds, deliver babies, dispense medicine—and change lives.
Across eight years, Alford worked as many as three jobs at a time, attended school, became a registered nurse, worked in an emergency room and studied under a midwife.
During her stay in Tampa, she discovered Bayshore Baptist Church, where her aunt and uncle were members. “I walked through the door and just knew this was going to be my home church,” she remembered.
In the process, she became acquainted with the Cooperative Baptist Fellowship, a strong part of Bayshore’s affiliation and identity.
“I’VE LEARNED YOU CAN’T DO ANYTHING ALONE. YOU NEED OTHERS, AND YOU NEED GOD. WE CAN’T DO ANYTHING IN OUR OWN POWER.”
As she considered returning to Morocco, CBF Global Missions’ focus on ministry to “the least of these” appealed to her. Although she hated asking for money to raise her ministry support, Bayshore stepped in the breach. The church committed to raising the funds she needed and became her Encourager Church.
Alford’s plans hit a snag when Morocco refused to grant expatriate visas. But geopolitical issues didn’t thwart her calling to provide medical care to people who wouldn’t receive it if she didn’t take it to them. Through the ensuing years, Alford served as a CBF field personnel in several locations alongside a variety of partners:
• She joined a medical ministry on the Indonesian island of Sumatra, working off a boat that traveled up and down the Musi River. “Some CBFers still think I work on that boat,” she laughed.
• When an earthquake triggered a tsunami that killed 500 people on Indonesia’s Mentawai island chain, she joined a relief effort funded by Baptist World Aid Australia. She ran the medical component of the group’s work. She expanded that medical ministry beyond tsunami victims to include long-term community development. She trained local people in simple medical care, disease prevention and hygiene, and taught midwives to deliver babies.
• Then, when she couldn’t get a visa to stay, she worked with Medical Teams International in Uganda, where she ran seven medical clinics in two refugee settlements.
• Finally, she moved to her current post in Togo. In addition to running the wound-care clinic, she’s working on plans to offer more primary health care and to start a community health care program.
“We’re able to get higher quality antibiotics and we’re able to get higher quality honey that we use for treating wounds because of donations,” she said. Honey has antibacterial and anti-inflammatory properties.
The people that Alford tends to may have never received medical care. They arrive to her clinic with wounds that have been manifesting for years. Wounds are easily infected because finding clean water is a challenge.
Across the years, Alford sometimes had to look on a map to find where she had agreed to live and work. But her enthusiasm for medical ministry in remote locations never waned. In brief discussions about her assignments in Morocco, Indonesia and Togo, she said things like, “I had the coolest job in the world” and “It was the best job on the face of the planet” at least nine times.
She discovered the opportunity to provide medical care in Togo through the efforts of CBF field personnel Lynn and Mike Hutchinson, who at the time worked in Lomé, the nation’s capital.
The Hutchinsons knew entrepreneurial pastor Hammer and his wife, Dela, who not only led a church but also founded a school and started a medical clinic in Vogan.
“They knew the clinic needed someone to continue expanding the program,” Alford said. “So, they wrote the job description, and it fit, and that’s how I ended up here. I have the most fun job in the world!”
Now, although Alford technically keeps clinic hours, that “most fun” job keeps her busy seven days a week. “I tend to see patients after church on Sunday,” she conceded. “People who are sick will come because they know I’m at the church. So, when church gets out, sometimes there are a few people I have to see.”
Alford has so much work to do because many West Africans don’t have access to clean water. “Most people don’t have running water, and most homes don’t have latrines,” she explained. Clean water is hard to get and expensive. So, families may rely on infested pond water or use water for multiple purposes, exacerbating unsanitary conditions.
“It may be the whole family shares one bucket for bathing,” she said. “It means if someone has even a scratch, it can get infected. This ties into some of the wounds we see.”
Those healed wounds, as well as the clinic’s expanding capacity to provide basic medical care, represent one area of Alford’s ministry. People from not only Vogan, but across Togo and even from Ghana and Nigeria have heard the clinic’s reputation for providing excellent health care at the lowest possible cost—thanks, in part, to CBF’s support.
About half the patients come to the clinic after hospitals have failed to help them, and many more cannot afford to go anywhere else.
Alford sees manifestations of beloved community in these patients. “Some of them come for so long, and they see each other all the time, so they become friends,” she explained. “They start talking, and they start helping each other. For example, clients who have motorcycles will start picking other patients up or taking them home. They become friends and provide a support system for each other.”
Alford also provides transformational development to young people who join her staff.
“They don’t come with medical training, but it’s all about wanting to learn,” she said. “When they first come, they watch and hand us things. Then we start letting them do a little of the cleaning. And now, I stand back and monitor their work. They are so good. They’re starting to treat the wounds as I would.”
Alford’s clinic’s work with healed wounds has spread to people from all over Togo, Ghana and Nigeria. A community and friendships have been built because of the patients.
“The biggest benefit is the donations we get for our clinic, so we can afford to treat patients even if they can’t afford to pay,” Alford said. Hospitals often fail to help patients, but they can’t afford treatment elsewhere.
“THE LESSON I LEARN EVERY DAY IS ABOUT DEEPER SURRENDER— SURRENDERING TO GOD AND ALSO LEARNING TO WORK AS A TEAM, RELYING ON OTHER PEOPLE. WE’RE NOT MEANT TO DO THIS ALONE.”
Alford and Pastor Hammer dream of “getting them off to school, where they can get a certificate,” she said. A certificate will provide the means to get a job in medicine—such as a nurse or a midwife— and then not only support their families, but also provide medical care in other villages across Togo and the region.
“What I envision is a network of practitioners all over who have been trained well and who care,” she noted. “The training is knowing it’s not just doing the bare minimum. We’ve set the standard for excellence and will guarantee patients are going to get good care. That’s one of my big dreams.”
Alford’s dreams for the young people who work alongside her dovetail with CBF’s Offering for Global Missions theme, “Behold, I am doing a new thing,” she said.
“The ‘new thing’ I would like to inspire in the people I work with is that they can do so much on their own. They have so many gifts and talents,” she explained. “They have been taught through colonialization and through poor governance that they are helpless. But I want us to teach them: ‘No, at least in health care, you have control. There are things you can do, choices you can make.’”
Whether she treats a wound herself or teaches a young protégé to treat a wound, Alford believes her opportunity to bear witness to Jesus “is showing love to people unconditionally,” she said. “It’s not judging them. It’s not trying to make them into something they’re not ready to be, but it’s loving them and holding space for them to become better versions of themselves.
“What humans need more than anything is love. They need to be loved. They need to know they are worthy, that they are good the
way they are, that they have possibility, that God has designed them to do great things.”
Some of the “great things” Alford hopes the Vogan clinic will accomplish include expanding its primary care program, building a simple laboratory so the team can run basic medical tests, obtaining more and better medicines and building out its community health program.
Alford is grateful to God, her Togolese friends and CBF for coming alongside her to accomplish goals that mean generational transformation and improvement in West Africa.
“I like to be the Lone Ranger. I like to just go off and do my thing, and that has allowed me to be successful in the remote locations where I’ve worked,” she acknowledged. “But I’ve also learned you can’t do anything alone. You need others, and you need God. We can’t do anything in our own power.
“The lesson I learn every day is about deeper surrender— surrendering to God and also learning to work as a team, relying on other people. We’re not meant to do this alone.”
Bringing Life into the World Dela’s
journey to become a midwife in Togo
By Grayson Hester
Reproductive health care and its practitioners are as old as the land and as storied as the Hebrew Scriptures themselves. Midwives, those who assist in childbirth, occupy a crucial—if not predictably overlooked—role in both the Biblical narrative and in the overarching story of humanity.
During the birth of Tamar’s sons, it was the midwives who caught the fact that the twins’ birth order was switched—thanks in no small part to their resourcefulness in attaching a crimson thread to Zerah’s arm. That thread, figuratively speaking, runs from ancient Israel to modern-day Togo, where people like Dela grasp it and continue the life-giving, revelatory work it has come to symbolize.
“When I become a midwife, I wish to come and share my knowledge with the workers here,” Dela said. The “here” she speaks of is Mission Chretienne Pour Le Développement Communautaire Au Togo (MCDC), or Christian Mission for the Community Development of Togo, a ministry providing affordable, accessible and compassionate healthcare.
Founded by a local Togolese pastor, Hammer, this clinic sits in the small town of Vogan, about 30 miles north of the West African country’s capital, Lomé. Vogan’s small size can, at times, serve to compound the poverty nearly 81 percent of the country’s rural population experiences. Healthcare, if available, is rarely sufficient. As far as midwifery is concerned, one out of every eight Togolese children will not live to see their fifth birthday.
It is into this context that Karen Alford, a Cooperative Baptist Fellowship field personnel who has medically cared for refugees and those facing poverty for nearly two decades, is called. And it is among people like Dela that she lives and works and is, in true CBF fashion, ministered to as much as she ministers.
“Dela—she’s from our local church. She’s young. She’s incredibly bright,” Alford said. The church is among a few critical structures that Hammer and his wife constructed, along with the aforementioned clinic and a school. While none of these places can overcome the sheer enormity of the need left in the wake of European colonialism, they can do the holy work of helping one person, lending purpose to one life at a time.
And in the footsteps of a Jesus who traveled light and claimed only 12 followers to his name, it is precisely this individual-based, small-scale ministry to which we are directed, the fruits of which are borne in dignity conferred and relationships restored.
“When I first came, Dela had only been there for a few months. She was just an assistant who would hand us things. We were teaching her and she was learning,” Alford said. “Now she’s one of my best practitioners.”
Ironically, Dela did not arrive with a career in mind. She first discovered this clinical passion—or it discovered her—at the church. In a right-place right-time moment, the life Dela had led up to that point converged with the possibility of a life she probably could never have imagined. It came to her, as the Gospels tell us often happens, in the form of attending to those experiencing illness.
“I was raised by my grandmother. It came to pass that she was sick when I was in secondary school, and we didn’t have money to take her to the hospital,” Dela said. “One day, I was invited to this church by a friend of mine. I enjoyed the worship so I decided to stay here and become a member.”
But it was Hammer’s ministry of radical presence that truly elevated this coincidence to the realm of kismet, of, perhaps, divine intervention. “The pastor paid a visit to me and saw my grandmother paralyzed, lying in the bed,” she said. From there, Hammer introduced Dela and her grandmother to a group of nurses who showed the two of them
unconditional love and care. And it was this seemingly inconsequential, ordinary act of pastoral care that instilled in Dela the desire to become a midwife.
While, according to Alford, Dela possesses the skill and tenacity enough to become anything she would want to be, it is this specific aspect of healthcare to which she feels led. “I’m teaching her what I know about examining patients,” Alford said. “We’re really hoping to send her to midwifery school, and then maybe she’ll be the one that can help us open a birthing center and get that program started; maybe; we’ll see.”
The “mid” in “midwife” could refer as much to the mechanics of their job as it does the theological implications. They stand in the middle of life and death, birth and spirit; they draw their breath in life’s thin moments, the liminal spaces where the membrane between here and hereafter loses its opacity and the unseeable can be, for a brief moment, perceived. They exist a ”mid” the duality so many of us spend our entire lives trying to avoid.
It is beautiful, brave work. And, given her experiences with her grandmother and her tutelage with Alford, Dela is more than prepared to take it on. “When I see people crying who, after the treatment, leave with joy and relief, it encourages and motivates me every day to come to be of service,” Dela said. “Why not become a midwife in this clinic if the clinic has a delivery room? I would like to work with this clinic in its development.”
And in aiding a clinic in its development, she is assisting in her own spiritual growth. The seemingly mundane work of healing and helping takes on spiritual gravity—no longer just about mending wounds, but transforming lives. Namely, Dela’s.
“God is going to do new things in my life… unbelievable things.”
“When I see people crying and after the treatment leave with joy and relief, it encourages and motivates me every day to come be of service.” Karen calls Dela one of her best practitioners with incredible promise.
“Karen always advises and encourages me…when I become a midwife, I wish to come and share my knowledge with the workers here. I would like to work with this clinic in its development.”
Called in Context
“Nontraditional” ministry path led Moyer to Second Story and First Baptist Columbus
People often say “nontraditional” when they talk about how Nico Moyer came to join the staff of First Baptist Church in Columbus, Ga.
Moyer is First Baptist’s city minister—director of Second Story, its ministry to college students, military personnel and other young adults. Second Story is located in Uptown Columbus, just a few blocks from the church’s campus.
Moyer, 34, agrees “nontraditional” provides an apt description of his long road to ministry. And he resonates with Jonah, the Old Testament prophet who ran from God, endured a raging storm at sea and spent three days in the belly of a fish before grudgingly accepting the ministry God planned for him.
“I recognize myself in that story,” he said. “As I look back, I can see God has always been kind of pushing me” toward ministry. That divine push made him a likely model for Called in Context, the Cooperative Baptist Fellowship’s emphasis on helping churches find solid ministers in unlikely— nontraditional—sources, such as among their own members.
All that wasn’t evident during Moyer’s “reckless childhood” in Connecticut, when he honed skills to be “a devil’s advocate.” It wasn’t apparent when he earned an
undergraduate degree from Southern Connecticut State University. And it certainly didn’t seem likely when he joined the U.S. Army’s elite Ranger Regiment.
“I served eight years in a special operations unit carrying out some of the most wild missions in some of the most extreme circumstances and places,” he said.
During his Ranger/alpha male phase, deployed in Afghanistan, “somebody asked me, ‘Do you know Jesus?’” he recalled. “I didn’t know what to say. I was like, ‘I mean, I believe in God, but I don’t know.’ So, I started reading the densest theology books I could find. I’m thinking, ‘Man, this stuff’s pretty cool.’ But then I recognized I knew a lot about Christianity, but I wasn’t actually building a relationship with Christ.”
During this phase, a career-ending tragedy indirectly nudged Moyer closer to ministry. He suffered a traumatic brain injury,
By Marv Knox
which eventually led to medical retirement from the Army. While transitioning out of the military at Fort Benning in Columbus, he faced existential questions.
“I had to figure out what to do with life,” he acknowledged. “I basically spent a year living in a van and turned it into community engagement. We called it the ‘Finding Nico Van Project,’ and it was a 501(c)(3) nonprofit. I raised money by saying, ‘Hey, if you’ll pay for me to be able to live for the day, I’ll go and volunteer for the day for free.’”
The project enabled Moyer to highlight local ministries and other nonprofits while building relationships and ministering to people. He loved it, and followers in the Columbus area loved supporting him.
During that time, thanks to the persistence of a military buddy, Moyer also discovered Second Story. Initially, he put his friend off. “But finally, I just said, ‘All right; I’ll go with you, man,’” he noted. “From the second I walked in the door, I knew this was my place.
“It was a beautiful representation of community and what church should look like. We had a couple of professional baseball players, but also military personnel, students from Columbus State and young adults who
“The transition was an ongoing process, there was healing and awareness that I had to go through.”
worked in the community. And we engaged in scriptural conversations and really deep stuff that I didn’t even realize I craved. From that day forward, I was bought in.”
Meanwhile, Moyer encountered life. He met and married Claire, and they found a dog. And he gave up his van ministry because “neither of them wanted to live in a van.”
Studying under the post-911 GI Bill, he earned a second undergraduate degree, this time in business administration, and then a master’s degree in organizational leadership at Columbus State University. He started teaching in the university’s signature servant leadership program. He became a life coach. He stayed deeply involved in First Baptist Church and in Second Story, where he taught Bible studies and became a steady fixture.
Moyer made a good impression, said Jimmy Elder, First Baptist’s pastor.
“From the beginning, Nico had a desire to help people,” Elder recalled, citing the ministry Moyer operated out of his van. “His personality is infectious, and his spirit is genuine. His desire to serve the Lord is very much a part of who he is.”
“I RECOGNIZED I KNEW A LOT ABOUT CHRISTIANITY, BUT I WASN’T ACTUALLY BUILDING A RELATIONSHIP WITH CHRIST.”
Moyer said he has always felt called to leadership and discipleship, putting it in his nonprofit work, multiple degrees and schools in the Army.
“Finally, I said, ‘I keep praying and talking, let me be quiet and listen for a second.’” And he felt the call to lean into ministry.
Moyer served for eight years with the Army’s Ranger Regiment, a top branch working in specialized missions. He suffered an injury that led to an early retirement from the Army but led to his life in nonprofit, Finding Nico Van, then his ministry with Second Story of First Baptist Church, Columbus, Ga.
So, Moyer’s gifts, interests, life experiences and deep connection to Second Story made him a nontraditional-but-logical choice to succeed Second Story’s original director, Brandon Stozier, who felt he should pursue a new opportunity.
The next Second Story director “had to be unique,” Stozier said, citing a litany of necessary relationships with the church and its staff, Columbus State University, the Uptown Columbus community and “the core group of Second Story.”
Stozier realized choosing Moyer to direct Second Story would be “the perfect marriage of ability and skill, heart and someone people could trust immediately.”
Elder recalled the pivotal conversation with Stozier: “Brandon came to me and said, ‘Look, I’m going to leave Second Story.’ But he said, ‘What I want to do is tell you I’ve already got somebody primed and ready to step in…Nico Moyer.’ I thought, ‘It’s a great idea.’”
Moyer checked all the qualification boxes for directing Second Story. And the timing was right. Stozier left the job at the end of 2021, just as Moyer earned his master’s degree.
“I accepted the role initially as director of Second Story,” Moyer said. “But the real shift occurred after a year of doing this. I felt God calling me to serve in a ministry capacity— to join the church staff and to be the best steward I could be of this opportunity by going to seminary and getting ordained.”
So, Moyer asked to meet with Elder, and their conversation proved consequential for Moyer, Second Story and First Baptist.
“I told Jimmy: ‘I want you to know I did not accept this job just to be the director of Second Story. I feel called and would love to serve as a minister within this church.’ Jimmy said, ‘I’ve been waiting for you to tell me that.’ I had been praying about this for months. I didn’t want to step on toes by seeking
ordination, and I didn’t want them to think it was an ego-driven thing.”
“He’s nontraditional,” Elder said, noting Moyer didn’t follow the seemingly typical college, then seminary, then church staff ministry trajectory.
“A lot of times, you go to seminary to get your degree to go into ministry,” Elder said. “Nico is in ministry, and he’s going to seminary (to Mercer University’s McAfee School of Theology) to broaden and deepen his understanding of what he’s teaching and sharing. It’s kind of the opposite of the way a lot of us would’ve thought about seminary as you go along.”
Moyer’s transition from a Second Story regular and lay church member to Second Story director and then also church staff member is “the New Testament way” of locating ministers, Elder added. “People were called out not because they had been to seminary, not because they had volumes
“People were called out not because they had been to seminary, not because they had volumes of theological books…but because they were serving the Lord,” said senior pastor Jimmy Elder about Moyer’s call.
Second Story is the young adult ministry, “Where Young Adults Thrive,” as a part of First Baptist Church Columbus. Moyer accepted the role as director but felt called to serve as a minister in the “New Testament way.”
of theological books…but because they were serving the Lord.
“If I have staff openings, I would be less inclined to just automatically go and find somebody who is a minister of X. I would be more interested in sitting with our people and saying: ‘OK, we have an opening that needs to accomplish this. What kind of person do you see in that position?’”
Stozier, who provided mentorship when Moyer began attending Second Story and saw in him the gifts for leading the ministry, sees in Moyer a template others may follow.
“Nico’s path into ministry is nontraditional in a way I would assume is becoming more traditional,” he said. “Even as you look back, you see the foundations for someone who has a heart for others, which is central to being a minister. Wanting to serve others. Wanting to help others. Wanting to make his community better. Wanting to make the lives of others better. It’s pretty cool to see how
“THE WAYS WE ARE RECOGNIZING AND FINDING GOOD LEADERSHIP IN OUR FAITH COMMUNITIES IS CHANGING.”
this flourished into his calling to full-time ministry.”
The experience of First Baptist Columbus, Moyer and Second Story can and should be replicated in other congregations, insisted Colin Kroll and Brian Foreman, Cooperative Baptist Fellowship staff members who developed and promote the Called in Context initiative.
“Called in Context is part of a larger conversation: What it means to foster a culture of calling in our congregations,” Kroll, CBF’s young adults ministry manager, explained.
“Our goal is to create conversations in congregations about how they may need to
“It’s amazing to be able to immediately utilize what we’re discussing in class within ministry because that just crystalizes that knowledge in me so much stronger.”
Moyer teaches courses on balance and routines at Columbus State University to keep himself balanced just as much as his students.
“Find your people and hold on to them.”
look right in their own church or community when they are filling ministry positions,” noted Foreman, CBF’s coordinator of congregational ministries.
“The ways we are recognizing and finding good leadership in our faith communities is changing,” Kroll said. “It’s filling ministry positions within the community; it’s calling and empowering people who are loving and leading and affirming that.”
“Just maybe, they’re right under your nose, and you don’t see them,” Foreman added.
In Columbus, folks are delighted First Baptist saw Nico Moyer.
Behold... A New Journey
By Grayson Hester
Migration
is more than a journey across borders—it’s a story of survival, resilience and hope. Behind every statistic, policy or debate are real people navigating the uncertainty of leaving behind everything familiar in search of safety and stability. For many, the decision to migrate is not a choice but a necessity, shaped by circumstances beyond their control.
Pilar’s story of survival, resilience and hope
Pilar, originally from Venezuela and now living in the United States, knows this firsthand. “I’ve been in this country for nine years. And I arrived because I was persecuted by the government of my country,” she said.
Venezuela, as it is widely known (if shallowly understood), has been embroiled in decades of political turmoil and social upheaval. Since 2013, Nicolás Maduro has been illegitimately serving as the 53rd president, and his most recent election “win” is still undergoing international criticism. Scores of Venezuelans are promising to leave if his grip on power goes unloosened. Millions of others have long since fled.
Pilar has lived estranged from her home about as long as Maduro has led it. She can attest to his administration’s indiscriminate ruthlessness.
“When my husband died in Venezuela, we had a buffalo farm,” she said. “The government told me that I had to give them the farm or they would kill me.”
Far from voicing an empty threat, the United Socialist Party of Venezuela fully intended to—and ultimately succeeded at— extracting Pilar’s land from her family. In one fell swoop, her family had lost its means of survival and a father and husband.
This injustice instilled in the family both fight and flight: Pilar’s daughter secured a student visa to study in the U.S., while Pilar began working with the electoral board. She spent her days rooting out and calling attention to government corruption. The depths of fraudulence within the Maduro machine kept her unendingly busy.
It also kept her firmly in harm’s way. A benign trip to visit her daughter in the U.S. turned into a crisis, one that would change both their lives forever.
“The government started to look for me in Venezuela, and my family tells me: ‘They are looking for you to kill you,’” she said.
Twice now, Pilar found herself at the barrel end of political targeting. Except this time, instead of having a home taken from her, she would be taken from her home: Under threat of death, she was not allowed to return.
She, like many other migrants, faced a choice that was simple. Either flee to another, more stable country or die.
“I did not want to leave my family behind,” she said. “I did not want to leave behind what was my life and what I knew. ”But what she wanted did not factor into the equation. What she had to do was all that mattered.
Separated by seven countries and immeasurable cultural gulfs, the U.S. poses significant challenges to those who emigrate from Venezuela. It’s difficult to navigate even by people who have lived here their entire lives; for those who come from vastly different cultures and who may not speak English, it is nearly impossible.
“Being a migrant, I didn’t understand the American system,” Pilar said. “That is why Migrant Journey was formalized five years ago as a nonprofit organization that helps people understand where they migrated to and how they need to integrate and have stability.”
And that’s why Cooperative Baptist Fellowship field personnel and attorney Elket Rodríguez dedicates his life and expertise to the very same mission.
His work takes him from the personal face-to-face interactions at the U.S.-Mexico border to political advocacy in Washington, D.C. It is all motivated by a very simple belief:
“There is a saying that untimely justice is an injustice,” Rodríguez said.
And Pilar’s situation certainly fit that bill. Even though she was fortunate enough to have connections outside of Venezuela, she nonetheless had to uproot her life and find herself estranged from the only home she’d ever known.
The massive country was unfamiliar and complicated, making the distance feel even longer.
“When you look at nine years living in a country where you’re not entitled to leave the country and you cannot go back to your own country,” Rodríguez said. “You’re put in a very tough situation. It’s not just her, it’s her daughter too.”
But if the Christ, who was a refugee himself, could extract redemption from his own difficult situation, then modern-day migrants can too.
Through the help of Migrant Journey, Rodríguez and CBF, Pilar’s past experience working with governments and bureaucracies has enabled her to help others in similar situations.
“Elket has impacted my life. He has impacted my ministry,” Pilar said. “He gave me the understanding to be able to take that information with clear, simple and easy words of what the people who migrate need to know and understand.”
It has brought something like redemption.
Having navigated America’s broken immigration system herself, and aided by the knowledge and resources that CBF and Migrant
Journey extend to her, Pilar is in a uniquely authoritative position to help fellow migrants—regardless of where they come from—not just settle here, but thrive here.
Migrant Journey receives hundreds of messages a day from migrants across the country in need of accurate information, resources and assistance.
It’s information but it’s also forming relationships. It’s resources, but it is sourced from the inexhaustible love of God. It is Gospel work in paperwork, a call to justice that is a phone call.
“Every day, God creates opportunities for us to use to help and serve other people,” Pilar said. “God is creating, every day, new rivers where there are droughts, where there is no hope.”
More than sounding like Amos 5:8—“But let justice roll down like water and righteousness like an ever-flowing stream”—this work is realizing its vision.
Although we may not see it in our lifetimes, this vision of a world defined by shared humanity and hospitality, not borders or security, is becoming more possible.
“Pilar’s testimony is a testimony of how you can use the circumstances that are against you and turn them into a blessing for others,” Rodríguez said. “And to do it with such a pastoral heart—it’s beautiful.”
“Pilar’s testimony is a testimony of how you can use the circumstances that are against you and turn them into a blessing for others,” said Elket Rodríguez. “And to do it with such a pastoral heart, is beautiful.”
He Aquí... un Nuevo Camino
Por Grayson Hester
La migración
es algo más que caminar a través de fronteras: es una historia de supervivencia, resistencia y esperanza. Detrás de cada estadística, política o debate hay personas reales que se enfrentan a la incertidumbre de dejar atrás todo lo conocido en busca de seguridad y estabilidad. Para muchos, la decisión de emigrar no es una elección sino una necesidad, condicionada por circunstancias que escapan a su control.
La historia de supervivencia, resistencia y esperanza de Pilar
la maquinaria de Maduro la mantuvieron interminablemente ocupada.
Pilar, venezolana de origen y con estadía en Estados Unidos, lo sabe de primera mano. “Llevo nueve años en este país. Llegué porque estaba perseguida por el gobierno de mi país”, dice. Venezuela, como es ampliamente conocida (aunque superficialmente entendida), ha estado envuelta en décadas de agitación política y convulsión social. Desde 2013, Nicolás Maduro ejerce ilegítimamente como 53º presidente, y su última “victoria” electoral sigue siendo objeto de críticas internacionales. Decenas de venezolanos prometen marcharse si no deja de controlar el poder. Otros millones ya han huido hace tiempo.
Pilar ha vivido alejada de su hogar tanto tiempo como el que lleva Maduro al frente de él. Puede dar fe de la crueldad indiscriminada de su administración.
“Cuando mi marido murió en Venezuela, teníamos una granja de búfalos”, explica. “El gobierno me dijo que tenía que darles la granja o me matarían”.
Lejos de ser una amenaza vacía, el Partido Socialista Unido de Venezuela tenía la firme intención de arrebatarle a Pilar las tierras de su familia, y finalmente lo consiguió. De un solo golpe, su familia había perdido sus medios de subsistencia, a su padre y a su marido. Esta injusticia inculcó en la familia tanto la lucha como la huida: La hija de Pilar consiguió una visa de estudiante para venir a los Estados Unidos, mientras que Pilar empezó a trabajar en la Junta Electoral. Pasó sus días investigando y llamando la atención sobre la corrupción gubernamental. Las profundidades del fraude dentro de
También la mantuvo firmemente en peligro. Un viaje regular de visita para ver a su hija en los Estados Unidos se terminó convirtiendo en una crisis que cambiaría la vida de ambas para siempre.
“El gobierno empezó a buscarme en Venezuela, y mi familia me dice: ‘Te están buscando para matarte’”, dijo.
Por dos veces, Pilar se había encontrado en el punto de mira de la política. Pero esta vez, en lugar de quitarle su casa, la sacaron de su casa: Bajo amenaza de muerte, no se le permitió regresar.
Ella, como muchos otros migrantes, se enfrentaba a una elección sencilla. Huir a otro país más estable o morir.
“No quería dejar atrás a mi familia”, dice. “No quería dejar atrás lo que era mi vida y lo que conocía.” Pero lo que ella quería no entraba en la ecuación. Lo único que importaba era lo que tenía que hacer.
Separado por siete países y gigantes abismos culturales, Estados Unidos plantea importantes retos a quienes emigran de Venezuela. Resulta difícil incluso para quienes han vivido aquí toda su vida; peor para quienes proceden de culturas muy diferentes y no hablan inglés. Es casi imposible.
“Siendo emigrante, no entendía el sistema estadounidense”, dijo Pilar. “Por eso Migrant Journey se formalizó hace cinco años como una organización sin ánimo de lucro que ayuda a la gente a entender el lugar donde emigraron y cómo necesitan integrarse y tener estabilidad.”
Y es por eso que el personal de campo del Compañerismo
Bautista Cooperativo y abogado Elket Rodríguez dedica su vida y experiencia a esta misma misión.
Su trabajo le lleva desde las interacciones personales cara a cara en la frontera entre Estados Unidos y México hasta la incidencia política en Washington, D.C. Todo ello está motivado por algo que creemos:
“Hay un dicho que dice que una justicia que no llega a tiempo, es una injusticia”, dijo Rodríguez.
Y la situación de Pilar encajaba perfectamente. Aunque tenía la suerte de tener contactos fuera de Venezuela, tuvo que desarraigarse y verse alejada del único hogar que había conocido.
El enorme país era desconocido y complicado, lo que hacía que la distancia pareciera aún mayor.
“Cuando llevas nueve años viviendo en un país del que no tienes derecho a salir y al que no puedes volver te ponen en una situación muy dura. Y no sólo es ella, es también su hija”, dice Rodríguez.
Pero si Cristo, que fue un refugiado, pudo redimirse de su difícil situación, los emigrantes de hoy también pueden.
Gracias a la ayuda de Migrant Journey, Rodríguez y CBF, la experiencia de Pilar trabajando con gobiernos y burocracias le ha permitido ayudar a otros en situaciones similares.
“Elket ha influido en mi vida. Ha influido en mi ministerio”, dijo Pilar. “Él me dio el entendimiento para poder llevar esa información con palabras claras, simples y fáciles de lo que la gente que emigra necesita saber, entender”.
Ha traído algo parecido a la redención.
Habiendo navegado ella misma por el quebrantado sistema de inmigración de Estados Unidos, y ayudada por los conocimientos y recursos que CBF y Migrant Journey ponen a su disposición, Castrillo se encuentra en una posición de autoridad única para ayudar a sus
compañeros migrantes -independientemente de su lugar de origenno sólo a establecerse aquí, sino a prosperar aquí.
Migrant Journey recibe cientos de mensajes al día de migrantes de todo el país que necesitan información precisa, recursos y ayuda. Es información, pero también formación de relaciones. Son recursos, pero proceden del amor inagotable de Dios. Es trabajo evangélico en acción, un llamado a la justicia que puede resumirse en una llamada telefónica, por ejemplo.
“Cada día, Dios crea oportunidades que podemos aprovechar para ayudar y servir a otras personas”, dijo Pilar. “Dios está creando, cada día, nuevos ríos donde hay sequías, donde no hay esperanza”.
Más que sonar como Amós 5:8 - “Pero que corra la justicia como el agua y el derecho como un torrente inagotable”-, esta obra está haciendo realidad su visión.
Aunque puede que no lo veamos en nuestra vida, esta visión de un mundo definido por la humanidad compartida y la hospitalidad, no por las fronteras o la seguridad, es cada vez más posible.
“El testimonio de Pilar es un testimonio de cómo puedes utilizar las circunstancias que están en tu contra y convertirlas en una bendición para los demás”, dijo Rodríguez. “Y es hermoso hacerlo a través de un corazón pastoral”.
“El testimonio de Pilar es un testimonio de cómo puedes utilizar las circunstancias que están en tu contra y convertirlas en una bendición para los demás”, dijo Elket Rodríguez. “Y es hermoso hacerlo a través de un corazón pastoral”.
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