When one of Adam Montgomery’s friends asked him to go to Africa seven years ago he was unsure.
“I believe in outreach and sharing but I wasn’t sure if I should go on that trip or not,” said Montgomery, pastor of Reno Baptist Church, Woodstock.
Bigger burden
But he began to pray and God began to stir his heart. And what he found waiting for him in Africa was an even bigger burden for outreach.
“In some of these places that are so remote their whole world is in a 10-to-20-mile radius — just the distance they can walk,” Montgomery said. “If we don’t go, how will they know?”
So now he’s actively involved with e3 Partners, an organization that evangelizes, equips new believers and assists them as they start churches and spread the gospel.
“I’m signed up with them to be a church planter,” he said. He regularly leads trips and seeks to pass on his passion for the Great Commission.
“Getting involved in missions creates a revival and an awakening of a church,” he said. “We’re seeing that. Being a part of the plan of God ignites a fire in people. There’s something about just getting involved in His work that changes the dynamic of a church.”
Richie Farrow, pastor of Olive Branch Baptist Church, Ashland, said he’s seen that happen in his own life and ministry.
He first felt called to Africa in 1999 at an Experiencing God weekend.
“God called me out to go to Mozambique that weekend. I had never even heard of the place,” he said.
But Farrow went and spent two weeks in a tent evangelizing. Since then he’s taken multiple trips to Kenya and Uganda and helped start an orphanage.
And through the years at the churches he’s served as pastor he’s taken 17 of his church members with him — one of whom is now a full-time missionary in Kenya.
“You come back on fire, rejuvenated, ready to go,” Farrow said. (Grace Thornton)
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