SEND TEAM Ken Owens, Team Leader I, K, L are the first initials of the names of three recent SC college graduates who will be spending the next two years in North Africa, Southeast Asia, and South Asia respectively as International Mission Board Journeymen. Their names can’t be shared because they are going to challenging places in the world where many have never heard the Gospel and the challenges of mission work are great. All three of them have been part of the pilot group of the Palmetto Collective, a new venture for the South Carolina Baptist Convention to invest deeply with college upperclassmen who desire to be missional leaders. South Carolina Baptists are fulfilling the Great Commission by investing in these young men, and others like them, and helping to send them to the nations with the hope of the Gospel. The SEND Team is focused on Encouraging, Equipping, and Empowering churches to fulfill the Great Commission by sending here, there, and everywhere so that all the peoples of the workers world will be saturated and transformed by the hope of the Gospel. The Palmetto Collective is just one way that we are helping churches send out workers into the harvest field.
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At the 2020 SCBC annual meeting, messengers approved a one-year extension to the fiveyear East Asia Mission Partnership Agreement that was signed in 2019. Steve Ellis, the International Mission Board’s East Asia Affinity Leader, shared the keynote message at the annual meeting and encouraged SC Baptists to pray, give, go, and send to reach over 1.7 billion people living in East Asian countries (1/4 of the world’s population). Over 100 church pastors, missions pastors, and leaders from 56 churches participated in Missions College, prior to the SCBC annual meeting, a new venture co-sponsored with the International Mission Board to equip mission sending leaders. Twenty-one college juniors and seniors completed the first year of the Palmetto Collective. Students worked through a discipleship journal each month, met monthly with a church mentor, participated in leadership retreats, and served on mission trips in Charleston and New York (even during the COVID hindered year). An additional 26 students were selected to be in the next class of the Palmetto Collective. Twenty-four multi-ethnic church pastors and leaders participated in Four Fields Evangelism Training. Chinese Church Planters began serving with The Church at the Mill in the upstate and Living Water Baptist Church in the Grand Strand to reach East Asians in those strategic areas of the state.
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