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FROM THE STATES: La., Ala., evangelism-missions news


Today’s From the States features items from: Baptist Message (Louisiana); The Alabama Baptist

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Instead of ‘suicide by cop,’
Sparks finds life in Christ

By Brian Blackwell

FLORIEN, La., (BP) — As he looked down the bore of a loaded gun, John Sparks felt he was barreling toward death on that fateful fall day.

Wanted for first-degree murder, Sparks found himself surrounded by a SWAT team in a Salt Lake City restaurant, Aug. 17, 1977. Thankfully, the officer pointing his revolver at Sparks decided not to shoot, choosing instead to spare his life and take him into custody.

Sparks eventually would land in prison, but having been reprieved from immediate death, he began a path that eventually would lead him to find eternal life in Christ.

Winding path

“I told the guy I had taken a hostage. I told him I was going up the stairs and out the door to die,” said Sparks, now pastor of Antioch Baptist Church in Florien. “When you have nothing else left ‘good’ in life and are the bottom scum of the earth, death seems like the only option. But thanks to my grandmother who prayed I would not die until I came to Christ, I found hope in the prison cell.”

Raised in church, Sparks participated in Vacation Bible School and other biblically based activities as a young boy. However, his first sip of alcohol at age 12 (during a fishing trip) sent Sparks’ teetering down the wrong path of serial addictions and destructive behaviors that led to a 50-year sentence for second degree murder.

Finding Jesus

After landing in the hospital for attempted suicide only months upon entering prison, Sparks was questioned by a physician about his personal struggles.

The doctor diagnosed Sparks as having anger issues and said he needed to face up to those problems.

Upon returning to his cell a few days later, Sparks kept thinking about the conversation. Then, he remembered a small red Bible his grandmother had given him not long after he arrived in prison.

Sparks picked up the Bible and confessed to God about his confusion.

“I tried to remember verses from when I was small but couldn’t make heads or tails of it,” he said. “I remember sitting on my bunk saying to God, ‘If you are going to do anything, do it, because I don’t know what to do.'” Immediately after this plea, as questions popped into his head, Sparks would “happen” to turn to a relevant passage.

After nearly an hour of this unusual “question and answer” time, Sparks knelt down by the bed in his cell and asked Jesus to forgive Him and to become Lord of his life.

“From then I have been a different person,” Sparks said. “Because of a law in Alabama that reduced time served for good behavior, I spent the next 14 years in prison, but spent every day a free man because Jesus saved me.”

Taking vows

As the years passed, Sparks grew closer to Christ and even enrolled in a prison religious studies program, and his changed life led to his gaining the chaplain’s trust.

Sparks pored over religious books and periodicals, including an issue of the Alabama Baptist newspaper that had published a letter to the editor from a female seminary student who shared about her difficulties while growing up with an alcoholic father. He wrote Donna about her troubles and eventually the two were regular pen pals.

The relationship blossomed and on Nov. 28, 1987 they were married in the prison chapel, and the two lived apart until he was released, Aug. 11, 1991.

Following Christ

During the ensuing 26 years, God took Sparks on a journey that included stops at several churches in various ministerial roles, including his most recent one at Antioch Baptist Church.

Since Jan. 1, 2015, Sparks has been the pastor of this congregation which averages more than 100 in attendance at Sunday morning worship services.

He has led the congregation to be mission-minded, taking members on annual mission trips to Honduras and Mexico, and sending the youth to help lead camps at various locations. He also is active in the local schools, with the focus of building relationships with students and faculty.

Looking back on God’s journey for him since that fateful day in 1977, Sparks is grateful how God has used his past experiences in prison to show others they too can escape the darkness of Satan.

“I get up each day and think I have the greatest job in the world to minister to God’s church and the community,” he said. “I get to pray and share Gospel with people and show them that there is hope. I am living proof that God can change a life and use what Satan meant for bad and use it for something good.”

Brian Blackwell is a staff writer for the Baptist Message (www.baptistmessage.com), newsjournal of the Louisiana Baptist Convention.

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Alabama program trains, equips,
mobilizes young adults to reach world

By Carrie Brown McWhorter

MENTONE, Ala. (BP) — At the Nehemiah Teams Training Center here, the view is expansive and so is the mission — to prepare young missionaries to finish the Great Commission in this generation.

“IMB President David Platt has called for limitless missionaries going out to the nations and for more pathways to get them there. Nehemiah Teams Advance Operations Training (AOT) is working toward that goal,” said Jess Jennings, an International Mission Board (IMB) representative in Southeast Asia who provides leadership for AOT.

Residential experience

Open to young adults ages 18–29, AOT is a residential training program held at the Nehemiah Teams Training Center at the top of Lookout Mountain in DeKalb County. Whereas Nehemiah Teams are deployed for summer-long international missions assignments, AOT trainees spend four months on campus and are then deployed to work alongside IMB and North American Mission Board (NAMB) personnel for assignments ranging from two months to two years.

“With AOT, we strive to fill longer-term requests through the normal channels of the IMB and also meet strategic needs in North America among refugees and unreached people groups,” Jennings said.

The AOT model is part of the strategy Jess Jessings and his wife Wendy have been using in the Philippines for the past six years. There, Filipino believers engage in discipleship training and are mobilized to go to unreached communities in their homeland to evangelize and plant churches. About 60 Filipino national believers have been trained in church planting and evangelism so far, Jennings said.

AOT in the U.S. will serve the same mission for American believers though their missions field may be anywhere in the world, according to AOT trainer Tyler Faught, who lives and works at the training center.

“We focus on evangelism tools and a church-planting framework that our team members can use in a variety of situations,” Faught said. “We also see a big part of our focus as mobilizing Americans to be involved in supporting and sending missionaries.”

For trainees time spent at AOT is not unlike a college semester though the focus is on nurturing a closer relationship with God and with other participants. Mornings are spent in Bible study and prayer. Afternoons focus on team-building and cross-cultural missions activities, once again focused on strategies that can be applied in a variety of contexts. The goal is to give trainees a “toolbox” of resources to serve effectively anywhere in the world.

Building community is another important part of AOT, Faught said.

“For many in this generation, communication and hanging out are done online. They’re not doing as much in person as they used to. So AOT is an opportunity to demonstrate what a healthy, gospel-centered community looks like,” Faught said. “Trainees see the value of having accountability, of working with others who are passionate about their relationship with the Lord and of supporting each other in striving for Christ-likeness together.”

Training is about developing independence as well as nurturing team dynamics, both of which are important in the missions field, he said. When he travels to Africa in July to assist Nehemiah Teams in the region, Faught will be evaluating whether the teams are meeting the goals set by the missionaries and how well team members are working together.

“It’s all about trying to find out ways we can better prepare students to help missionaries carry out their strategies,” Faught said.

Sending well-prepared volunteers into the field makes a big difference in their effectiveness, said Chad Stillwell, IMB student mobilization leader.

“For every hour of discipleship or training students in programs like AOT receive prior to missions service, we see real rewards in both their confidence and effectiveness in sharing the Gospel, discipling new believers and starting churches,” Stillwell said. “AOT is a model for training and discipleship of student and young adult missionaries.”

AOT also offers an opportunity to experience the church like it was in the beginning, Faught said.

“In Acts we see how the church grew and how determined believers were even in the midst of persecution to share the Gospel and go where the gospel had not been spread,” Faught said. “This semester really shows you how you can be part of what Scripture calls us to do. To me, that’s pretty exciting.”

AOT fall semester will begin Aug. 17 and run through Dec. 17. No prerequisites are needed to apply for AOT. Applications and more information about program costs and expectations are available at www.ntp52aot.com. Applications received by Aug. 1 will receive first consideration.

Carrie Brown McWhorter is a correspondent for The Alabama Baptist, newsjournal of the Alabama Baptist State Convention.

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EDITOR’S NOTE: From the States, published each Tuesday by Baptist Press, relays news and feature stories from state Baptist papers and other publications on initiatives by Baptist churches, associations and state conventions in evangelism, church planting and Great Commission outreach, including partnership missions. Reports about churches, associations and state conventions responding to the International Mission Board’s call to embrace the world’s unengaged, unreached people groups also are included in From the States, along with reports about church, associational and state convention initiatives in conjunction with the North American Mission Board’s call to Southern Baptist churches to broaden their efforts in starting new churches and satellite campuses. The items appear in Baptist Press as originally published.

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