CBF commissions 18 field personnel

CBF Communications

Fellowship Baptists lay hands on newly commissioned Gene Murdock.

Photo by Rod Reilly

Cooperative Baptist Fellowship

MEMPHIS, Tenn. - The Cooperative Baptist Fellowship (CBF) commissioned 18 people to global missions service June 18 to begin the Fellowship's annual General Assembly in Memphis, Tenn.

"You have blessed these field personnel with your presence in this place," CBF Global Missions coordinator Rob Nash told the approximately 1,000 Fellowship Baptists who gathered at First Baptist Church of Memphis for the commissioning service. "Truly, we send them together into the world."

Included in the count of commissioned missionaries are four North Carolinians: Julie Maas of Raleigh; Karen Sherin of Lillington; and Matt and Melanie Storie of Sanford.

The new personnel will serve in a variety of ministries - from teaching English in Asia to starting kindergartens in Africa.

"(Our mission) is about the lost, the poor, the hungry, the thirsty, the people who have no Christian presence in their midst. That is the path we are called to," Nash said.

Maas and her husband, Eric, will serve as directors of the Belize Baptist Training Center. Sherin and her husband, Kenny, will be based in Missouri and serve as advisors for Together for Hope, CBF's rural poverty initiative. The Stories will be ministry coordinators with Sowing Seeds of Hope in Perry County, Ala.

In a challenge to the approximately 1,000 gathered, Nash said missions must change because the world is changing.

"It's not enough until we join together and become engaged together in reaching the world with the gospel of Jesus Christ," he said. "What excites me the most is the possibility as we join hands together in ministry and mission in the name of Jesus Christ."

With these 18, the Fellowship now has 163 field personnel.