March 01, 1991 by Ed Edwards

One Church Implements the Adopt-A-People Concept

This is the story of the experience of one church, Hinson Memorial Baptist Church of Portland, Oregon, which took the challenge to reach the unreached seriously. Hinson Baptist is a member of the Conservative Baptist Association which has named its program "Focus on a People" instead of Adopt-A-People. Although the name is different, the concept and challenge are the same. The Conservative Baptist Foreign Mission Society is also a member of the Adopt-A- People Clearinghouse. We can learn much from the experience of Hinson Baptist in implementing the Adopt-A-People concept in their church. This article is reprinted by permission of Impact magazine.

The work of world missions has exploded in the 20th century with tremendous advances into unevangelized areas. At the same time, however, pockets of peoples are not being reached due to differences in culture, language, religion or politics. Some of us at Hinson Memorial Baptist Church in Portland, Ore., realized that most of our missionaries were still being sent out to ministries which were fairly well established. The unreached were still being unreached.

To give our church a sense of active involvement in reaching our world, Hinson's Missions Committee began a focus on one unreached people group. Our experience may be helpful to your church in setting up a similar ministry.

We felt it was important to select a people group with a natural link to our church through some of our own missionaries. This would greatly reduce the time and effort needed to explain and promote the project to the church.

Two of our own members, Garry and Connie Morgan, had been appointed by CBFMS to an evangelistic ministry in Kenya. Their ministry focused on the 150,000 Muslim Digo people along the southern coast. We determined that the Digos would be the most responsive to the ministry our church could offer.

The next step was to define our responsibilities and set goals for the ministry to the Digos. Because the challenge of planting a strong church among them may take many years, we realized that ours would be a long-term commitment. It would require prayer, educating our church, supporting the missionaries and nationals who work among the Digos, periodic visits, and recruiting members of our own congregation to minister among the Digos.

So far, our direct involvement in the Digo ministry has included providing scholarship monies for a Digo Christian to train at a Bible school in Kenya. Also a team from Hinson's singles class spent the summer of 1988 assisting the church-planting team in Kenya. One of these members returned in the summer of 1990 to gather fresh information on the progress of the ministry.

Finally, the job was to educate the Hinson congregation in the new strategy. We did this by showing a media presentation to the congregation, distributing a brochure on Digo history and culture, and giving visibility to Garry and Connie Morgan. We also started a "Digo Corner" in Hinson's monthly news bulletin.

The Hinson congregation was enthusiastic about the program from the very first. Having one of our own members directly involved in the ministry was a great encouragement. Prior to this program, no one knew what a "Digo" was. It took much education and promotion to increase the awareness and understanding of our congregation. As long as the Missions Committee keeps the Digo ministry in front of our eyes, our people are supportive of the effort.

Reaching the world for Christ is an enormous task. With each church taking on a "bite-sized" piece of it, we can all work together to accomplish what none of us can do alone. This ministry brings the joy and excitement of being part of a worldwide cooperative effort to finish the job we were given by Jesus Christ.