BaptistLIFE Online

With 11 different language groups and over 700 people in attendance, the Baptist Convention of Maryland/Delaware’s (BCM/D) eighth annual Language Music Celebration was held at Global Mission Church in Silver Spring, Md., on March 28. The colorful celebration featured worship performances from a variety of cultures, including a group of dancers from Bolivia, South America (pictured above).

By Shannon Baker, BCM/D National Correspondent

SILVER SPRING, Md.— With 11 different language groups and over 700 people in attendance, the Baptist Convention of Maryland/Delaware’s (BCM/D) eighth annual Language Music Celebration was held at Global Mission Church in Silver Spring, Md., on March 28.

Held on Palm Sunday each year, these celebrations feature worship performances from different language churches across the multi-state convention.  To date, there are 18 different language groups with churches in the BCM/D.

Included in this year’s celebration were the Bhutanese, Burmese, Chinese, Filipino, Haitian, Hispanic, Korean, Nepalese, Vietnamese and West African churches. This was the first year for the Burmese church as well as the West African churches.

Church planters, Lisa Mele and Lois Akehurst, representing South Asia also made an appearance. Though she did not perform, Mele indicated her earnest desire to build a church and to be included in next year’s big event.

In his welcome, Global Mission senior pastor, Dennis Kim, praised God for the “variety” of churches represented that night.

As in years past, Kim and his church have offered their facilities at no cost for the free event, shared Rolando Castro, BCM/D missionary for church planting/evangelism and language churches.

“Global Mission Church is incredible,” Castro said, expressing his gratitude that the Silver Spring church does much to prepare for the annual festivities.

Castro shared that the growing music celebrations give churches opportunities to get together and share who they are and to teach about their particular culture and forms of worship.

In his opening remarks, BCM/D Executive Director, David Lee, noted that the Palm Sunday celebration was a great way to launch the Holy Week leading up to the celebration of Christ’s resurrection. He shared a message from Romans 8, which identifies Christians as “more than conquerors,” who as co-heirs and children of God “cannot be separated from the love of God.”

After enjoying the time of worship, participants shared a special multicultural meal in Global Mission’s fellowship hall.

For more information, contact Rolando Castro at (443) 285-2012, rcastro@bcmd.org or Robert Kim at (410) 977-3816, rkim@bcmd.org.

By Rolando Castro, BCM/D Missionary for Church Planting/Evangelism/Language Churches

Henry Blackaby suggests joining God right where He is at work in the world. I prefer to use the word “culture” instead of world, just to avoid confusion with those who feel the word “world” is in fact an evil one.

Rolando Castro and his wife, Zulma

If we believe God is at work, even before we show up, then we should accept what He is doing in using a wide variety of ways in a wide variety of scenarios to bring about His purpose.

God’s heart is always passionate about those outside of a relationship with Him. He cries and seeks for each living person on our planet, no matter if this person is worshiping other gods or claiming to be an atheist. This is also the “church planting” heart.

Now, the way we think He is seeking to build this relationship is crucial in our understanding of our role in God’s plan. Usually we think God is “calling” people to leave their natural environment (whatever it is), and join a safe “Christian” one. By believing this, we accept that our call is to “invite” people to church, where the worship leader and the pastor will give them an invitation to offer a prayer and become Christians. From that point on, our role changes and soon we are the people in charge of leading these new believers in a lifestyle marked by the total abandonment of their former environment.

On the other hand, if we think God is not “calling” people to leave their natural environments, but “working to change” those environments, then our role should be different, too. Instead of trying to bring people to our church services and make them “one of us,” we’ll be “going” and joining their very environments with a missional or missionary mindset.

By holding this position, the goal in planting new churches is not for the new believers to leave their natural environments, where all their relatives, friends and colleagues are, but rather to embrace them with a transformed and transformative heart. Then, with the Holy Spirit’s help, they are able to impact the culture around them.

The story of God’s intervention in human history, as it’s revealed in the Bible, is always in the context of culture: Abraham, Isaac and Jacob in their relationship with their neighbors in Canaan; Joseph in Egypt; Daniel in Babylon; Nehemiah in Persia; Paul in the Greek cities of the first century, and, of course, Jesus in His own cultural setting in the Roman province of Galilee.  Today God is doing the same in our cities and communities around the world. Church planting is the best way to partner with and join God in His purpose.

We are called to be yeast, salt and light. These elements are only helpful if they are used on raw, unsalted and dark environments, where these environments are present in the culture.

Thus, we must ask ourselves: How is God at work in the culture within our communities today, and how we are attempting to join Him? Let’s try Church planting.

Rolando Castro is the BCM/D missionary for Hispanic church planting, evangelism and language churches. He can be reached at   rcastro@bcmd.org or at
(443) 285-2012.

By Sharon Mager, BCM/D Staff Correspondent

COLUMBIA, Md.—First Church, Laurel, may sound a little like the upper room at Pentecost next month, filled with the sound of people with different languages raising their voices in unison to praise God when the church hosts the first Mosaic Language Regional Conference. The event will be Friday evening, April 3 and Saturday, April 4 with a grand language music celebration at Global Mission Church on Sunday, April 5.  “Growing the church; Growing the kingdom” is the theme. The keynote speaker will be Daniel Sanchez, professor of missions, and director of the Scarborough Institute for Church Growth, and chairperson of the Missions Department at Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary in Fort Worth, Texas.

Sanchez speaks internationally about language missions. He served as a missionary to the Republic of Panama, has served the Southern Baptist Convention (SBC) in various missions capacities and has personally started churches and supervised more than 60 church starts.

Friday will be a kickoff with dinner, worship, an introduction of speakers and an opportunity to peruse the information booths including the Baptist Convention of Maryland/Delaware (BCM/D), the International Mission Board, LifeWay and other SBC agencies.

Mosaic is the first conference of this kind for BCM/D and Rolando Castro, BCM/D language churches missionary, is excited. The primary purpose for the conference is to foster a sense of the need for language churches to grow.

“We don’t have large churches, only two or three in an area where language groups are huge,” Castro explained. “We’re doing something wrong.”

Part of helping churches grow, Castro said, is resourcing them. That’s another component of the conference—showing pastors the resources available to them.

“We want language churches to know what we are offering. At this time, there is a huge lack of information on how BCM/D can help language churches. They don’t see us as resource people working for them,” Castro said.

On Saturday, there will be five different sessions each presented in different languages—Chinese, Spanish, Korean and Filipino and English.

Speakers for each language group are: Daniel Sanchez, keynote and Hispanic speaker; Jerry Sin, Chinese speaker, church planting group, North American Mission Board; Jason Kim, Korean speaker, multi-ethnic evangelism coordinator, PeopleGroup/Interfaith evangelism team, NAMB; Ralph Garay, Filipino speaker, senior consultant-Asian church planting, church planting & mission development department, Baptist State Convention of North Carolina. Also speakers from the LifeWay’s Multi-ethnic Church Support Department will be giving a conference in two separated rooms in Spanish and English for all attendants.

The conference is for all evangelical language churches, whether they are Southern Baptist or not. The cost is $25 if they are a member of the BCM/D and $45 if not. For more information, see http://www.bcmd.org/mosaic0409.