A view from the living room

Your IBSA building in Springfield has a new living room. When I write “your,” I really do mean it. While the IBSA building provides office space for your IBSA staff, 3085 Stevenson Drive also serves Illinois Baptists from all over the state, throughout the year. It’s your building, and you are welcome!

And by “living room” I’m referring specifically to an inviting new space in your building that has been designed to enhance that welcome. Just recently, inside the main entrance and to the left as you enter the building, we have renovated previously vacant office space and a 50-year-old kitchen into a café, a casual seating area, a modern kitchen, and a large meeting room designed and equipped especially for the dozens of IBSA committee meetings and conferences that will now gather there.

This renovated space also now opens onto an attractive patio, where meeting goers can step outside during breaks, or where mild weather events can be hosted. When we dedicated the area following the last IBSA Board meeting, I spontaneously referred to it as our new “living room” for Illinois Baptists, a gathering place for those who desire to join their lives together on mission for years to come.

A few days later, I was sitting in the new meeting room, enjoying the view of the accessible new patio. I realized that the spot where I was sitting was once in my first office at IBSA, and my thoughts flashed back to what used to be.

At that time overgrown ground cover surrounded the building, and I was told that we didn’t open the heavy sliding doors to the old patio because mice, snakes, rabbits, and who knows what else lurked just outside, and apparently in the past had come inside. That’s why, when a main sewer line broke just beyond the patio a few years ago, we took the opportunity to tear out the hip-high jungle and replace it with grass and an irrigation system.

Also, back when your new living room was my office, our IBSA staff worked on three of the building’s four floors, in many cases much closer to tenants than their co-workers. So about ten years ago, we took the necessary steps to move our staff onto one floor, and then remodeled the first floor into its current conference and meeting space, providing new technology to serve it.

Continuing my mental stroll down memory lane, I recalled the IBSA Board telling me in my early days that the building’s entire air conditioning system would soon need replacing. Also, there were no exterior building signs. The front steps were starting to crumble. The parking lot needed resurfacing. Oh, and we should talk about the needs of both IBSA camp properties.

Sitting there in what’s now your new living room, I remembered with gratitude that over several years, one step at a time, sometimes one problem at a time, we had gradually addressed each of these challenges, and renewed each of IBSA’s main gathering spaces. The new living room was simply one of the final touches.

It was a good moment for me, not just to remember how far we have come by God’s grace in stewarding our physical facilities, but in how much resolve and determination and time it often takes to repair, to renew, to revitalize. It’s true in our churches, and in our cooperative mission together, and even in each of our spiritual lives. Sometimes the progress we desire can seem painstakingly slow, and the problems we must solve can seem painfully expensive. That’s why, every now and then, we need to sit and look out the window for a minute, and recall how things used to be, and how far we’ve come.

Nate Adams is executive director of the Illinois Baptist State Association. Respond at IllinoisBaptist@IBSA.org.

From the front: summer outreach to open doors

Continued from page 1 share the gospel,” said Sammy Simmons, formerly a pastor in Benton who is now National Project Director for NAMB’s Send Relief. “We may see as many as 75 different churches partnering together potentially representing over 1,200 volunteers.”

The Serve Tour is in its second year. In March, IBSA Mission Director Shannon Ford traveled to Montgomery, Ala. to see how the weekend works.

“I joined a group from North Carolina to paint an elementary school across the street from the neighborhood Baptist church,” he said. “We got to meet teachers and administrators. It was really good community.”

In May, the first international Serve Tour stops were in Bangkok, Thailand and Nairobi, Kenya. Ahead of the SBC Annual Meeting, teams will serve in New Orleans June 9-11. Athens, Greece and Philadelphia, Penn. will round out the 2023 itinerary in September.

In Chicago, the teams will work out of four hubs covering regions in the metro: Ashburn Chicago on West 83rd St., Starting Point Community Church on W. Wrightwood Ave., Send Relief Ministry Center at Chicago West Bible Church/ Lake Ave., and Faith Tabernacle Baptist Church on S. Cornell Ave. Churches began signing up for their specific projects on May 30 at servetour.org, choosing from among 45 planned service opportunities.

“I’m so excited about these projects that I’m bringing my wife and son to serve as well,” Simmons said. “It’s not too late for churches to partner with us.”

NAMB is providing a list of recommended hotels for the two-day stay, although some accommodations can be made for groups that wish to “camp out” at a local church. Ford emphasized that volunteers can sign up for just one day. Individuals or small teams can partner with larger groups.

“We hope that churches from central and Southern Illinois will come partner with churches and church plants in the Chicago area,” Ford said. “They can develop relationships so later the churches in Chicagoland can do ministry downstate with their new partners there.”

There’s also opportunity for churches in the suburbs to invest in the city. “It’s an easy crosstown mission trip,” Ford said.

IBSA Executive Director Nate Adams said he and his wife, Beth, and IBSA staff will be joining the Serve Tour to open doors for the gospel. “This summer let’s not be content to stay home and sit in the comfort of our routines and safe relationships. Let’s find ways to deliver love and service and the gospel message to those who are still far from God.”

Oswego | It was a sea of yellow shirts at the funeral for Wayne Laechelt as Illinois Baptist Disaster Relief (IBDR) volunteers gathered at Crosspointe Church to honor their friend May 20. Laechelt, 67, died tragically when a tree that he and a co-worker were removing from the property at Streator Baptist Camp fell on him. The accident was simply without explanation.

What could be said, and was repeatedly in the weeks after his death, was Laechelt’s love for the ministry that became his passion in retirement. “Wayne and Bev are among the best examples I can name of Disaster Relief volunteers, representing Illinois and Christ well in every situation,” said Shannon Ford, IBSA Missions Director. “Wayne was always making certain that flood recovery, or tornado recovery, or work at Incident Command led to conversations about Christ. He told all the volunteers, ‘That’s why we do this.’”

Laechelt served on the IBDR Executive Leadership team. Since 2012, he had completed ten training modules, including chaplaincy. And as a former high school teacher, he turned his gifts toward training new DR volunteers.

“Wayne was an articulate teacher who stressed correct methods and procedures without being too technical or overbearing,” State DR Director Arnold Ramage said. “If a volunteer had questions, he would always answer them in kind and caring manner.”

One standout moment was his service after a mass shooting at the Independence Day parade in Highland Park in 2022. Drawing on their connections with other relief groups in Chicagoland, the Laechelts helped organize ministry to families shaken by the shootings, traveling three hours round trip daily for more than a week to serve in the north suburban community. “It’s hard work, but we know we’re supposed to be there,” Wayne said of their servant ministry at the time.

“This is a tragedy that is difficult to process, concluding a life so devoted to the Lord and to service,” IBSA Executive Director Nate Adams said, in a message that resonated with the state’s more than 400 trained IBDR volunteers. “We as a Baptist family join Wayne’s wife, Bev, and the family in their grief.”

Laechelt was featured in a 2021 news story during a callout after Hurricane Ida in Louisiana. With DR co-worker, Ken Cummins, former school teachers from opposite ends of the state became good friends and a stellar ministry partners. “We’re a comedy team,” Cummins said of the joy they found in their labor. “We have a lot of fun.”

Laechelt’s friends honored him with an ice cream fellowship after the service. “I will always remember Wayne’s love of ice cream,” Ramage said. “Since he and Bev were often the first to arrive at a callout, he would always visit local ice cream shops before other teams arrived. We have many fond memories of eating ice cream together.”

New Orleans June 11-14