More than 1,100 Baptist churches throughout North Carolina last week volunteered in their communities as part of Serve NC, a statewide project launched this year by the Baptist State Convention of North Carolina. The purpose was to help vulnerable populations, including homeless people, orphans, prisoners, refugees and the elderly.
“In my almost 20 years of being a Christian, I can’t remember a time that a group of churches this large was doing something like this together,” Todd Unzicker, executive director-treasurer of the Baptist State Convention, told Religion News Service.
Despite a tropical storm that scuttled some outdoor projects, the churches managed a range of aid initiatives. In Winston-Salem, Calvary Baptist Church packed 750 school backpacks. First Baptist Church of Raeford built a wheelchair ramp for a couple in the community. Friendship Southern Baptist Church in Concord put on a “Senior Prom Night” at a local nursing home. Salem Baptist Church in Dobson stocked shelves and bagged groceries at a local food pantry.
The Southern Baptist Convention has faced a series of challenges in recent years: Serve NC was a local effort to get out from under those challenges and serve the communities.
But mainly, the Serve NC projects were intended to help communities in need.
Wesley Knapp and his wife, Conner Waldrop, volunteered at a weeklong Vacation Bible School in a Raleigh apartment complex that houses refugee families from several different countries. The young couple are members of Imago Dei Church and said the experience of playing with the children, many of whom were just learning English, was fun and eye-opening. One day, they planned to take the children to a trampoline park.
“I think we both left this experience with more of a pull toward fostering and adopting down the road,” Knapp said. “It was just so cool to interact with those kids and again, just the humility that that brought into our lives during that week was super impactful.”
For Zac Lyons, the pastor for missions and evangelism at Imago Dei, the weeklong service project was a way to cultivate a deeper commitment to helping others. “The real focus is to have people regularly serving in the community,” Lyons said. “It’s a catalytic tool to see they can do this on a regular basis.”
–Alan Goforth | Metro Voice