We are now several months removed from our largest Faith Promise missions offering in the history of our church family, both in terms of how many people are participating and the amount of funding promised. As a result of that funding response, our Missions Team was able to increase our missions participation in some significant ways for 2023. Here is a brief summary of the new additions to our monthly missions’ support, which started in January.
1. Campus Outreach — LifePoint partnered with Campus Outreach in 2020, bringing that ministry focused on reaching college students for Christ under both our shepherding and our administration. Every staff member with CO is a faith-based supported member of our church staff. In other words, we do not pay them a salary, they raise their own support to do the work they do. This year, we were able to help in that support raising by adding nine of the local ministry staff to our monthly support.
2. The Boaz Project — We have assisted this ministry that works primarily with orphans and orphan-based ministries in the past with one-time donations. This year, we added the ministry to our monthly-supported teams. The Boaz Project works with gospel-centered orphan ministries in Africa, India, and Russia.
3. Myron Drent — Myron is a retired pastor (he served for over thirty years in pastoral ministry at one location in northern Indiana) who, approximately ten years ago, began a teaching ministry in Uganda. That ministry has expanded, and now Myron and his wife Krista call LifePoint home, and Myron spends multiple months each year teaching and serving in Uganda, along with occasional other opportunities abroad.
3. Kara Lantrip — Kara has been a member here at LifePoint for many years. In the past, she has taken shorter term missions trips (including a year in Africa). Recently, she decided to pursue missions full-time and is now serving in Mozambique.
4. Katie O’Malley — Like Kara, Katie is a long-time member of our church family. She also took some short-term mission trips and opportunities prior to a decision to pursue missions full-time. She now serves with a missions-sending agency (One Way Ministries) in Chicago.
5. Ray & Tami Theaker — We have been supporting Ray, who serves in missions recruiting with the ABWE (Association of Baptists for Worldwide Evangelization) for the past year. This year, Tami joined her husband as a faith-based missionary with the same organization. Ray and Tami were also long-time members of our church family.
6. Nathan Miller — Nathan, like many of the other missionaries we support, is also a long-time member at LifePoint, having grown up in our church family. He has been sent out on numerous mission trips throughout the years, from Mexico, Russia, and Africa, to name a few. Nathan is now serving full-time as a missionary engineer with To Move Mountains in Sudan.
7. Nickolas Skopych — Nickolas was a pastor with Sasha Skrypak in Ukraine serving the Almaz church fellowship. With the onset of the war, he moved to Germany and began ministering to refugees there with the help of his wife, Kati. A church has now been planted in Germany, and we support both the church-plant and Nickolas and his family as they minister there.
8. Shepherd Community Center — Like the Boaz Project, we have assisted Shepherd Community in their ministry here on the east side of Indianapolis with one-time gifts for years. This year, we brought them on board with monthly support. Their ministry on the east side of our city is profound, gospel-centered, and faith-based.
I will say again here what I say frequently on Sunday mornings from the pulpit. I am continually amazed at the generosity and heart for missions that is evident here in our church family. We do not do anything perfectly here at LifePoint, and some things, quite frankly, we do not do particularly well. But we do other, (important) things in a praiseworthy manner, and one of those things is missions and missions sending. I am very pleased to be a part of that. We care about the gospel going to the nations, and we send missionaries well. Many of our full-time supported missionaries were trained, equipped, and sent out right from our church family. I praise God for that. A hearty “thank you” to all of you who pray, give, and serve for missions at LifePoint. We are part of Jesus’ Great Commission, and it is a joy to be on that mission together!
Grace and peace,
Pastor Jym