The 2008 Great Rivers Region Mission Conference is scheduled for Friday, April 25 and Saturday, April 26 at Cherry Hills Baptist Church (2125 Woodside Road, Springfield).

The cost of the conference is $30 for both days for $15 for one day and meals. There is no charge if you come for Friday evening only (no meal). Childcare is available. Registration forms are available online (www.abc-grr.org/missionsconf) or on the bulletin board outside of Merriam Hall.

Friday evening speakers will be American Baptist missionary to Thailand serving in the United States, Duane Binkley and GRR Associate Minister serving Area II, Max Klinkenborg. American Baptist missionary to Costa Rica Gary Baits will be a speaker and breakout leader on Saturday.

Breakout Groups will help you understand what American Baptists are doing to make a difference with Children in Poverty, Women at Risk, Resettlement of Baptist Refugees, and mission service. Church members Dave & Carol Matheson will talk about their experience in Bluefield, Nicaragua and American Baptist missionary Gary Baits will share about his mission field in Costa Rica.

Offerings will be given for Murrow Indian Children’s Home and to scholarships for volunteer participation in the Gulf Coast Baptist Blitz Build April 27-May 17, 2008. Saturday morning there will be a time of recognition and commission of Gulf Coast workers.Participants are also invited to bring Wal-Mart gift cards for Murrow Indian Children’s Home and Campbell’s soup UPC barcodes also for Murrow.

The American Baptist Men’s Disaster Relief trailer will be available. They have many stories to tell about the work they have been doing.

Also available at the conference will the Used Book Depository. Individuals, Sunday School classes and small groups are encouraged to bring old Bibles, commentaries, study helps, adult Sunday School quarterlies and Christian reference books to the conference Friday. Church libraries, pastoral collections, collections of Bibles can be distributed around the world for use in seminaries, learning centers and educational venues. If your items look a little rough around the edges, that’s OK, they will be repaired before they are shipped.

Judi and I went to the theater this week. We went to Hoogland Center for the Arts to see an Over the Moon Production of Wit. I admit that, left to myself, I would never have chosen to see this play. Wit, after all, is about Professor Vivian Bearing’s last year of life and her battle with stage four metastatic ovarian cancer.

I like the theater. I like comedies. I like mysteries. I like musicals of all sorts. But death and cancer I do not like. So, I would never have chosen to see this play. That is, under ordinary circumstances. But this was no ordinary circumstance.

One of our church members, Leigh Steiner, was playing the lead role. Most of us have seen Leigh’s work as a director (Children of Eden, The Secret Garden, The Fantasticks, etc.), but I had never seen Leigh act. So, out of curiosity and great personal appreciation for Leigh, I suggested to Judi that we see the play. Wow.

Wit is a brilliantly conceived play written by Margaret Edson, whose vocation is teaching reading to small children. The cast did a wonderful and seemingly heart-felt job. Leigh’s presentation of the character Vivian Bearing was far beyond impressive. If I had any credentials in the theatrical arts, I would probably say that Leigh’s delivery was masterful, deftly nuanced, and profoundly evocative. In short, it was convincing.

Why am I telling you this, other than to applaud the gifts of one of Central’s own? I mention Wit because on multiple levels this play speaks to the primary human condition, to questions of life and death, and to how we treat each other while we still have each other to treat. For a Christian watching the play, themes like hope, the value and power of being truly present for each other, the limitations of intellect, and the gift of God’s unmerited grace all come to mind.

I would not have seen the play under ordinary circumstances. Ironically, the play itself reminded me that there are no ordinary circumstances. Every day of life is an extraordinary gift. Every opportunity to be faithful to God is an extraordinary opportunity. Not one single chance to do that which is good, not one lone opportunity to fulfill the law of love, not one occasion to grace the life of another person should be missed or taken for granted.

This makes it seem even more imperative to me that as a church family, and as individuals who follow Jesus, we respond generously to our America for Christ Offering in March. During the month of March, American Baptists across America are gathering an annual offering called the America for Christ Offering. A portion of our Offering remains in Illinois and Missouri for use in and by the Great Rivers Region and a portion of the Offering is forwarded to Valley Forge where it is used by our National Ministries office.

I have lifted a few sentences out of a letter I received from Dr. Aidsand Wright-Riggins, Executive Director of National Ministries, ABC, USA, to explain how our America for Christ Offering monies are used.

We have sent hundreds of volunteers to the Gulf Coast to help rebuild homes and lives following Hurricane Katrina.

*We have helped to resettle more than 96,000 refugees since World War II.

*American Baptist chaplains, endorsed through National Ministries, serve on the battlefield in Iraq as well as in hospitals and prisons.

*The American Baptist Children in Poverty initiative, developed and implemented by National Ministries, is working to transform the lives of children with limited resources.

*National Ministries’ evangelism training is making a difference in sharing God’s Good News by transforming regional and church leaders’ understanding of evangelism — which in turn is transforming the leadership of those American Baptists they train in their regions and associations.

We will never meet, or perhaps even hear about, many of the people whose lives we touch through the American for Christ Offering. A family in Mississippi devastated by Katrina receives a new home. A refugee from Burma finds freedom and a new life in America. A solider in Iraq is given strength and courage while meeting with a chaplain. A child in Detroit finds a path out of poverty. A single mother in Los Angeles meets Jesus and begins a new life. These are your gifts to the America for Christ offering. Hardly ordinary.

Give generously. Don’t miss the chance. Our church goal is $5,000. Pray for those people whose lives will be touched through this offering. God will touch your life as well. There are no ordinary circumstances where God is involved.

See you Sunday,
Reg