African-Americans Reaching Africans
Engaging Africans in their own culture can prove to be challenging for some Americans. Americans often look different, speak different and have different mannerisms. Learning basic greetings in the local language and pronouncing names can be tricky.
This was not quite the situation when a team of volunteers from Broadview Church made a vision trip to visit unevangelized people in western Africa. Broadview is an African-American church in Broadview, Ill., a suburb of Chicago. In coordination with IMB missionaries, they plan to make repeat visits to share the Gospel in areas Christ is not known.
When the team of four African-American men encountered a group of Africans, they did not immediately seem to be strangers to the people, as they were similar in appearance.
When the men introduced themselves with traditional African names they had chosen upon arrival in western Africa, smiles quickly widened on the people’s faces. Depending on their new name, some of the men discovered they were meeting family.
The connection between the Broadview men and the Africans was readily noticeable as warm, engaging African-American personalities connected with the welcoming and embracing African culture. A unique bond was formed from the onset with little effort.
Broadview Church, a 2,500-member Southern Baptist congregation, first became connected with the IMB in 1995 when current senior pastor, Marvin Parker, and his wife, Inez, attended the Southern Baptist Convention that year in Atlanta.
“We had opportunities to see the commissioning service there and my wife and I went forward and prayed for God to use us in missions whichever way He wanted to,” Parker said. “So that’s how we got started.”
Two years ago, Parker was appointed senior pastor of Broadview, a church whose theme is “Bring them in, build them up and send them out.”
“That always stuck with me, ‘send them out,’” Parker said. “I was elected pastor and the Lord gave me three things — back-to-basics Bible study, family-friendly and missions.”
When Parker attended the SBC in 1995 he was disheartened to see no African-American believers being appointed to serve overseas.
“To see all those missionaries going from America and not one was African-American,” Parker said. “… I thought it was just a shame that we weren’t actively involved in missions so that inspired us to go.”
Parker feels several issues contribute to African-American churches not serving internationally, but one of the largest factors is thinking too locally.
“African-Americans think of missions as helping those around us; as a whole we don’t have that vision to go,” Parker said. “When we think of missions we don’t think internationally.”
Broadview Church is becoming an example to mobilize other African-American churches in international missions by sending volunteers overseas.
Over the past two years, Broadview has conducted four international mission trips to South America and Africa and more than one dozen mission projects across the United States. The church is also involved in approximately 20 local organizations in the Chicago area.
Staff members of Broadview attended training conferences with the IMB and learned of needs in western Africa and how evangelism tools such as the Creation to Christ story (C2C) could be effective there.
It was after an IMB missionary visited Broadview, presented C2C and shared about people groups in western Africa that Parker and other church staff felt God was calling their church to help reach the lost there.
A team from Broadview made their first visit to western Africa in October 2009 to work out logistics for future trips but also to begin sharing the Gospel and planting seeds for future work.
“God answered our prayers; we came to study logistics and find a man of peace and God gave us that from day one and more,” Parker said. “We prayed for fruit every morning; it was a miraculous trip. All glory to God.”
During the vision trip, the team enlisted prayer partners in the church to voice their prayers while in western Africa. Those prayers were answered as three men became believers and were baptized in the Atlantic Ocean.
“We’re about to explode, we don’t know how to act; our church was praying and we’re overjoyed,” Parker said. “Whatever we have put our hand to do, the Lord has blessed us. It’s not us.”
Broadview hopes to make several visits to western Africa in the coming year and is encouraging and challenging other African-American churches to join the work in Africa.
“If you trust God with what little you have, He will provide the rest,” Parker said.
To learn how your church can get involved in missions in Africa, visit www.imbafrica.org.
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