On The Journey Conversations National WMU, Sandy Wisdom-Martin

The Cooperative Program Stage provides an opportunity for messengers to the SBC Annual Meeting to hear firsthand reports about a variety of SBC missions and ministries. Listen to a panel discuss making disciples of Jesus who live on mission at the CP Stage in the exhibit hall of the 2022 Southern Baptist Convention. You will be inspired by their testimonies. Joining Sandy on the CP stage are Mark Bethea, senior pastor for First Baptist Church in Montgomery, AL; Liz Encinia, executive director-treasurer for Kentucky WMU; Chris Martin, executive director for the Hawaii Pacific Baptist Convention; and Tamiko Jones, executive director-treasurer for WMU of Texas.

For information on getting missions discipleship started in your church, visit https://wmu.com/missions-discipleship.

Today’s conversation is with Mark Stevens who serves with the International Mission Board. In March of 2003, terrorists placed a bomb at a small airport in the Philippines. The explosion took the lives of 23 people including our missionary, Bill Hyde. Bill’s widow, Lyn Hyde, placed flowers and a sign at the airport that said, “Filipinos are worth dying for.” That courageous gesture galvanized Southern Baptists in the Philippines. Filipinos began saying they wanted to be missionaries to unreached people groups. Mark talks about his experience that day and the miraculous things he has seen God do since that tragic event.

We don’t live in a fixed time in history. We are always pressing forward to the future God has for us. The stories of our past help propel us. The vision that motivated women 134 years ago is the same today because it is God’s vision to make disciples of Jesus who live on mission. Every generation must find their place in God’s plan. In this podcast, Sandy Wisdom-Martin will share the circumstances which gave birth to WMU and celebrate milestones through the decades.

Author Julie Busler says, “Depression doesn’t always look like lying in bed crying all day.” From an outsider’s point of view, Julie’s life would have seemed picture perfect, even remarkable to those who knew she had experienced the death of her mother and the suicide of her father. Unresolved issues, significant trauma, and her own mental health struggles led Julie down the path of considering suicide as well. Follow the journey of this courageous woman to the mission field, as a patient in a psychiatric hospital abroad, and home again.

Missie Branch, director of graduate life and assistant dean of students to women at Southeastern Baptist Theological Seminary shares how to get beyond your own space to make relationships with people that are different than you. Look for opportunities to have conversations outside your bubble. Missie says, “When I was a kid, my mama was on the corner with her tracts. She had her speech; she loved the people in her community and so she wanted to see our community captured by the gospel.” We need that same passion for the lost of our community today. Overcome fear and be intentional about sharing the hope within you.

Join Sandy as she visits with Paul Chitwood, president of the International Mission Board as well as Connie Dixon, president of Woman’s Missionary Union. Discover who influenced them for missions. Hear their passion for the nations. Celebrate what God is doing even in the midst of a global pandemic. Learn how to be an advocate for the global work of Southern Baptists.