A World Changers crew tearing out a ceiling at East Side Baptist Church in Pine Bluff. Photo below shows the new ceiling being painted. (Submitted photos)
Student groups from Texas and Tennessee travelled to Pine Bluff during the week of June 10-17 to serve the community through World Changers. The World Changers organization provides hands-on mission experiences to assist churches in developing students spiritually. This year 54 participants travelled from San Antonio and Emory, Texas as well as Milan, Tennessee for a week of serving others and sharing the Gospel.
Although there were no participants from Arkansas at this year’s project, the Arkansas Baptist State Convention and Arkansas Baptist churches were well represented and received the benefits of a week of intense missions and ministry opportunities.
Travis McCormick, Missions Team member at the Arkansas Baptist State Convention, served as the project coordinator for the week while Youth Pastor/Minister of Education at FBC (First Baptist Church) Royal Thomas Little served as the construction coordinator. Dalton Adger, current pastor of FBC Pine Bluff and Ken Thornton, former pastor, served as the site coordinators.
Projects for the week are usually provided by and coordinated through the city. This year however, the projects for Pine Bluff were provided by the Harmony Baptist Association, several local churches, and the Baptist Collegiate Ministry at the University of Arkansas at Pine Bluff.
One crew worked at Christ the Redeemer church to organize the clothing closet, paint the kitchen, clean up in and around the church, paint lines in the parking lot, canvass the neighborhood and do personal evangelism
At East Side Baptist Church, a crew worked all week to tear out and replace the sheetrock and the lighting in the fellowship hall ceiling.
At Family Time Church, a crew painted 24 doors, repainted all the concrete floors, installed new door handles and baseboards, canvassing, prayer walking and doing personal evangelism.
At First Baptist Church in Pine Bluff, a crew spent the week pressure washing the entire property, tearing down the old fence and building a new fence, removing rubber mats from the playground and installing new rubber mulch.
At New Fellowship Church the crew pressure washed the building and sidewalks, painted the awnings, did general clean up, yard work and canvassing.
Another crew spent a couple of days tearing out border and painting rooms at the Harmony Baptist Association Office.
On Friday afternoon a group met with Matthew Hall at the UAPB BCM where they moved furniture, did some light cleaning and prayer walked the campus.
At the end of the week, participants had shared the Gospel over 40 times, raised over $250 to help support a NAMB (North American Mission Board) church planter and saw four salvations.
The week of July 14-20, Life Line Baptist Church in Little Rock will host World Changers teams that will serve throughout Little Rock. For more information about this and other World Changers Projects go to https://www.world-changers.net.