By Nate Adams, posted April 16, 2024 in Cooperative Program
Editor’s note: Nate Adams is executive director of the Illinois Baptist State Association.
A little more than 100 years ago, Baptist soldiers and volunteers were returning to America from World War I-ravaged Europe, lamenting the physical, emotional and spiritual devastation they were leaving behind. Back home they found many of those same needs in a traumatized America. From History: World War I, also known as the Great War, started in 1914 after the assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand of Austria. His murder catapulted into a war across Europe that lasted until 1918. During the four-year conflict, Germany, Austria-Hungary, Bulgaria and the Ottoman Empire (the Central Powers) fought against Great Britain, France, Russia, Italy, Romania, Canada, Japan and the United States (the Allied Powers). Thanks to new military technologies and the horrors of trench warfare, World War I saw unprecedented levels of carnage and destruction. By the time the war was over and the Allied Powers had won, more than 16 million people—soldiers and civilians alike—were dead. World War I
For years prior to that, Southern Baptist churches had already been cooperating to send international missionaries like Lottie Moon and to advance domestic missions and church multiplication through advocates like the Woman’s Missionary Union’s Annie Armstrong. But with hearts newly broken for the lostness of their nation and world, those early century pastors and churches resolved that more could be done – and that more must be done.
Maybe the recent war bond drives had given people a new vision of what was possible when shared convictions focused shared resources on a shared mission. Or maybe the death toll they witnessed all too personally had given those families and churches a new urgency and compassion for how many were stepping into eternity without Christ.
Or maybe it was just that generation’s time and turn to step up to the Great Commission calling of Jesus.
But they stepped up big. The Rest of The Story Here
