May 01, 1986 by Jim Stewart

Calvary Baptist Church in Gardena, California is not the first church to supplement dollars with talents in worthwhile endeavors, but it has certainly utilized that concept far more effectively than most others. Its focus is missions  and even more specifically, missions to impact Hidden People groups. The motivating concept of the church is that the greatest impact on missions Calvary Baptist could make might be through its own home based congregational talents rather than just the missions budget itself. Every Friday morning at 6:00 am. Calvary Baptist holds a men's prayer breakfast. And with a burning heart for missions on the part of its members, missions are always a part of their prayers and their discussions.

The church's mission focus developed when Dr. Ralph Winter, Director of the U.S. Center for World Mission, spoke at their church causing them to ask, "What can we do?" Since Calvary Baptist is only a 30 minute drive from the USCWM church members asked what they could do for the Center.

An McCleary, General Manager for the USCWM suggested, "We probably need to take an inventory of the whole campus." So, under the direction of Ken Carison, business manager for the church, the men of the prayer breakfast pulled together a team of 18 individuals and category by category the needs for repairing, plumbing, electrical, painting, carpetry, etc. were categorized. "As we did the survey we made a page for every project," Carlson explained. 'These projects could range from replacing a missing door handle to repairing the roof of the auditorium. Out of this we developed 275 pages of things needing to be done," he said. "We have three computers at the church, and as men with the necessary talents become available, we plug them into the most pressing projects."Contractors, students, bus drivers, electricians these are just a few of the volunteers tiled in our list. "We get skilled people to do the technical or highly professional parts of a job," Carlson said, "and then utilize a number of 'go fors' to act as assistants. By this method we turned an old 8400 square foot store into our own church preschool including installation of all the plumbing, lighting, and heating. A lot of people can't do a lot of different kinds of things," he said, "but they can all work."

Currently there are 32 men and 12 young people directly involved in this ministry and since January of this year they have donated in the neighborhood of 600 hours of labor.

Word about the ministry is spread mainly through church bulletins and by personal, contact "In one case," Carlson related, "when we needed an expert on refrigeration, one of our members mentioned this fact to a fellow worker at his place of employment and the worker said, 'Hey, I would be willing to donate some time to a project like that in order to help the Lord.'"

Another individual donated $1,000 so the church could set up an emergency materials purchase account so projects stymied by the lack of some minor item or material could continue to proceed without delay. When they went to Mexico on a job they took all their own tools and equipment with them. Carison also emphasized, "The key to success is to set up one person as the coordinator or catalyst and something like the Friday morning prayer meeting is indispensible to keep the project enthusiasm at a high level." The group also uses The Global Prayer Digest to help keep a strong enthusiasm for missions, as well as participating in the Frontier Fellowship movement.

In addition, talvary Baptist is recruiting individuals and groups from other churches in the greater Pasadena area to address the many other needs they are aware of especially those at the USCWM. "Our goal istobring a lot of other churches into the project," Carlson said.

What are some of the other projects that Calvary Baptist crews have worked on? "We built a parsonage in La Mesa, California, years ago, as one of our first projects. A lot of different volunteer contractors were involved in that job," Carlson said.

The U.S. Center for World Mission has the largest auditorium in the whole San Gabriel valley area. This winter a large section of the roof fell down because the supporting timbers had dried out and shrunk so much over the years that the bolt nuts holding these large timbers up could be easily turned with your fingers. Volunteers from Calvary Baptist sheered up the structure and tightened the bolts, working long hours over three successive Saturdays.

During the Easter period their young people tore down the loose and falling the in the campus community dinning hall so that contractors could replaster the whole ceiling.

A few weeks ago USCWM General Director Art McCleary asked them. "Could you muster skilled laborers to put in a fire alarm system in Townsend Hall if we furnished the materials?"

They certainly could! Working three Saturdays again, their skilled volunteers installed the metal conduit, pulled all the wires and hooked up the necessary equipment as ordered by the Fire Marshal. "They did the job for $3500 worth of materials," said McCleary, "and our best outside bid for the job was $7500."

"Volunteering here has done a lot for our people," Carison commented. 'It is giving us a great heart for the U.S. Center along with a greatly increased vision for missions." He has invited other churches in the area to help the USCWM and said Calvary Baptist would be glad to direct, coordinate or help in that effort in any way they could.

"If your church really wants to make an effort like this work, though," Carlson said, "besides needing someone to take responsibilty for the effort and a motivating force like Calvary Baptist's Friday morning prayer breakfast, you also need to have your pastor strongly behind the effort Rev. H. Earl Kauester of Calvary Baptist is certainly behind us. Perhaps that's the main reason why ours is a very missionminded church."