Original World Changers staff recalls the Southern Baptist initiative that changed student missions
The original World Changers staffers – Andy Morris and Tim Yarbrough – are interviewed by Rob Carr on this edition of the Brotherhood Remnant Podcast. Morris and Yarbrough recall the formation and original nationwide launch of World Changers work projects for Southern Baptist students, and the impact it had on youth missions in the denomination. Click below to watch Episode 9 of the Brotherhood Remnant Podcast on YouTube.
Below is the original announcement of the World Changers coed educational program announced in Baptist Press:
October 24, 1989
Brotherhood initiates coed
missions education program
By Jim Burton
MEMPHIS, Tenn. (BP)--Southern Baptists' first coeducational missions education/action program for youth was approved at the October meeting of the denomination's Brotherhood Commission.
Targeted for youth from age 15 through high school seniors, the new program is called World Changers -- Southern Baptist youth making a difference. It consists of 10 training sessions, typically led by a local church's youth leadership, and culminates in a nine-day missions project.
"If we are going to function in today's Culture, we have to function in a coeducational environment," said Brotherhood Commission President James H. Smith.
"Involving Baptist teen-agers in a project of the magnitude of World Changers can help shape a world view out of which comes a heightened receptivity to ongoing missions education and participation," said Dellanna O'Brien, Southern Baptist Woman's Missionary Union president, from her office in Birmingham, Ala.
"World Changers has the potential of providing for young people many of the positive dimensions that volunteer missions projects have given our adults in recent year. We are pleased to find ways of cooperating with Brotherhood in the area of missions projects while continuing our primary focus on women and girls."
"The future of our missions endeavors is the involvement of our young people," said Billy Summerlin, Brotherhood trustee chairman from Gadsden, Ala. "If we miss them, we've missed a great opportunity for our future missions movement."
World Changers "has a broad impact on our whole convention. I'm glad we're on the cutting edge of something like this."
Trustees approved a new staff position, special projects coordinator for the children and youth division. Mike Day, former editor of High School Baptist Young Men's curriculum, will fill that position and develop the World Changers program.
World Changers will be piloted next summer with churches in Tennessee's Shelby Baptist Association, where the Brotherhood Commission is located, Day said. Two hundred youth are expected to participate in a summer project tentatively slated for Appalachia.
Long-range plans call for three national projects each summer and one international project. Each would require up to 400 youth, said Day.
Brotherhood officials said World Changers is designed to enhance existing High School Baptist Young Men, Pioneer Royal Ambassador and Acteen programs by providing an option for cooperative missions involvement. In churches that currently have youth missions education programs, the different groups would meet once monthly 10 times for missions study prior to the summer project.
World Changers also is designed for churches without a youth missions education program that wish to provide missions involvement experience. The desire behind World Changers is for these churches to develop High School Baptist Young Men and Acteen programs after participation in World Changers, Day said.
A third target group cited by Day is "non-traditional" Brotherhood audiences. Black and ethnic leaders reportedly have endorsed World Changers as the "kind of combination" needed for their youth, he said.
In other business, trustees heard reports on a year-long financial turnaround and disaster response.
Smith reported to the trustees that the Brotherhood Commission's "year of austerity" left the agency in the black Sept. 30, the last day of the fiscal year. A year ago, the commission had an estimated $110,000 deficit following the introduction of two new programs and the production of more than 30 new publications.
The commission's income statement shows a net gain of $287,477.12 for the year. The commission currently is operating on a budget of $3,132,788.
"Not only have we paid ourselves out of debt entirely, but we have generated a very sufficient cash flow," said Smith.
In 1988-89, the Brotherhood Commission faced the challenge of two hurricanes -- Gilbert and Hugo -- in its disaster relief program. Working with the Southern Baptist Foreign Mission Board, 570 volunteers Brotherhood-recruited went to Jamaica to rebuild churches following Hurricane Gilbert. Brotherhood trustee John Baxley of St. Augustine, Fla., was the on-site coordinator.
More recently, volunteers from 11 states fed 350,312 meals in South Carolina following Hurricane Hugo. According to Douglas Beggs, the commission's adult division director, the South Carolina response was the largest effort in the history of the commission.
Both Summerlin and Smith noted the spirit of the trustee meeting as indicative of the cooperation needed in missions.
"The spirit of unanimity continues to amaze me," said Smith. "Nearly every entity of the Southern Baptist Convention has moved toward their trustee meeting with apprehension because there is division. We have too many important things to accomplish. We need to be about the business which we've been called."
Trustees elected to serve on the commission's executive committee this year are Summerlin, chairman; Don Varnado, Alexandria, La.; Walter Barnes, Birmingham, Ala.; C.L. Bowe, San Jon, N.M.; Joe Lenamon, Fort Worth, Texas; Joe Lennon, Wake Forest, N.C.; Ellis Norris, Washington; Wendell Reed, Salem, Va.; and Spud Willett, Warren, Mich.
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Labels: Brotherhood Commission, missions, Southern Baptist Convention, student missions, World Changers
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