Unlimited Partnerships

One of the websites I visit often is www.joemckeever.com . Joe is Director of Missions for the Baptist Association of Greater New Orleans. He is a veteran pastor, a cartoonist, and an all around great guy. Joe's blog is well written and always entertaining and informative.

Many of my readers know that I am always interested when the subject of Louisiana comes up anywhere. My family lived in Baton Rouge when the boys were young. I was always fascinated with "The Big Easy" and enjoyed visiting there. For the past five years our older son, Jay and his family have lived in the New Orleans area where he serves as Pastor of First Baptist Church of Westwego. I also have the privilege of serving on the Board of Trustees at the New Orleans Baptist Theological Seminary. Naturally any time someone mentions the seminary or my son, I'm going to be interested!

Such a thing happened in one of Joe's latest blog posts. Naturally I want to share it with you.

Joe writes about a new project called Ulimited Partnerships, in which Jay's church is involved. It is an excellent program, put together by Bill Taylor (formerly of LifeWay) designed to connect outstanding seminary students, with churches in the New Orleans area who are trying to rebound from the big storm. Here is an excerpt from Joe's post:

"Unlimited Partnerships is 7 seminary students, sponsored by seven outstanding churches or associations across the country, working with 7 of our New Orleans area churches in education, discipleship, and evangelism, in partnership with the seminary, our association, the state convention, and even NAMB. The one-Monday-a-month gathering is attended by the students, the 7 pastors, several special guests whom Bill Taylor invites each month, a professor or two, and Freddie Arnold and myself...

Bill was impressed by some of the students' reports of their work. Here's a sample....

Bethany Hales (working with New Covenant of Harvey) conducted 4 sports camps in the largest housing project in Louisiana.....25 children have accepted Christ. The attendance in this church has gone from 30 to 55-60 and they have baptized 10 since U.P. began. The church has never had a Sunday School, but Bethany is starting one and presently training the workers.


Bill writes, "You will like this. Last week the drug lords in the area called the police and reported the church...said the church was selling imitation jewelry at a car wash. The police came...found this was not true... The policeman talked to the owner of the car wash and he let Bethany use one of the car-washing stalls. The young people and mission teams did not have to stand out in the blazing sun to give out tracts and share the good news. Can you imagine the drug lords calling the police about a young seminary student leading a group of children and students as they shared the gospel."


"Angie Baumann works with Gentilly Baptist Church. She has expertise in lawn care and is leading a group of students in planting flowers in the yards of people in her neighborhood. As Joe McKeever said, 'Can you imagine trying to write a job description where one must have an expertise in planting flowers and sod all over the community.'"


Then Bill quotes from a letter written by Dillard Wilbanks of the FBC of Dallas, Texas, who was with us last month and visited the home ministry of the FBC of Westwego where Jay Adkins is pastor.


"Per my recent visit I would say three things about Unlimited Partnerships and the New Orleans area church and NOBTS student that FBC Dallas sponsors: (1) The adult home Bible study group on Sunday afternoon with the FBC Westwego members came closest to duplicating the dynamics of that 1st century house church of any group I've experienced in my 40+ years of education ministry. The wide range of participants from new believers to the more mature added energy to the interactive study as "the light would come on" related to practical application of the Scripture being explored."


"(2) There are great dividends in matching evangelistic churches and exceptional pastors with the brightest and best of a new generation of Christian educators who are students at N.O. seminary and committed to holistic disciple making."


"(3) First Baptist Church, Dallas, invests some one million dollars annually in hands-on mission endeavors in and around the city. None of which I believe will make a greater contribution to the Kingdom and to the spiritual rebirth of a city than Unlimited Partnerships..."

Unlimited Partnerships is a great success thus far! Jay's church is benefiting from having Bobby Wood who will serve them as a Minister of Education for a year. FBC Dallas pays Bobby's salary which is an expense the Westwego church couldn't handle right now. The seminary student gets "real world" experience and the church gets the benefit of a bright, talented, and energetic young man with a heart for Christian Education.

My understanding is that if the Unlimited Partnership "pilot" concept is successful with these first seven churches, the plans are in place to expand the program to include more seminary students and more churches in "The Crescent City". God has taken the tragedy of the circumstances surrounding Hurricane Katrina and opened countless doors of ministry in New Orleans and all along the Gulf Coast. Unlimited Partnerships is one of those ministries.

Hats off to Bill Taylor for seeing the opportunity and building on it.