GLOBAL MISSIONS
Love Your Neighbor
We count all people as our neighbors, whether they live in our community or half a world away. Here's how we're following Christ's command around the world.
CBF Offering for Global Missions
As a member of the Cooperative Baptist Fellowship, each October Meadow Oaks Baptist Church collects funds for the CBF Offering for Global Missions. The purpose of the offering is to provide support for field workers around the world who are devoting their lives to cultivating beloved community, bearing witness to Jesus Christ and seeking transformational development among people and places otherwise forgotten and forsaken.
Texas Baptist Hunger Offering
As a member of the Baptist General Convention of Texas, Meadow Oaks Baptist Church conducts an annual emphasis on gifts for the Texas Baptist Hunger Offering. The offering gives churches a way to join together to end hunger and poverty and to promote holistic transformation in the name of Jesus. The Hunger Offering disperses the donated funds to more than 100 hunger relief and development ministries across Texas and around the world.
Missionary Friends
Our congregation keeps in touch with and helps provide support for several former church members who are now serving abroad. We are proud of the work being done by our friends Casey and Brittany Ramirez (and their children, Juniper and Finnley) in China, and our friends Amelia & Trey McCain (and their son, Derwen) in Wales. The reports they send us of their experiences are important reminders to us about the challenges faced by people in cultures different from our own.
Beloved Community
The expression “Beloved Community” was coined by American philosopher Josiah Royce (1855-1916), but most of us became aware of the term Beloved Community from Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.
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Dr. King declared, “The end is reconciliation; the end is redemption; the end is the creation of the Beloved Community. It is this type of spirit and this type of love that can transform opponents into friends…It is this love which will bring about miracles in the hearts of men.” For King, building Beloved Community connoted the hard work of reconciliation, redemption, and being in right relationship, including “transforming opponents into friends.”
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Dr. King’s Beloved Community possesses a global vision in which “poverty, hunger, and homelessness will not be tolerated because international standards of human decency will not allow it. Racism and all forms of discrimination, bigotry, and prejudice will be replaced by an all-inclusive spirit of sisterhood and brotherhood. In the Beloved Community, international disputes will be resolved by peaceful conflict resolution and reconciliation of adversaries, instead of military power. Love and trust will triumph over fear and hatred. Peace with justice will prevail over war and military conflict.”
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In many ways Beloved Community is another way to describe what Jesus called the Kingdom of God. Following Jesus’ way means practicing radical kindness and compassion today just as Jesus did when he walked on earth. Jesus’ love transcends cultural and tribal divisions. G.K. Chesterton said it this way: Beloved Community “has not been tried and found wanting; it has been found difficult and not tried”. . . .
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Beloved Community is not just a friendly-sounding phrase. Beloved Community is a calling that leads to action for the common good. Among other things, building Beloved Community is an antidote to the toxicity of politics and culture in America.
--Excerpt from “Why Beloved Community?” Cooperative Baptist Fellowship of Virginia, 9/14/2017, https://cbfva.org/beloved-community-2017-2018/beloved-community-introduction/