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by Alan Bradley
When a person is serving in his local church
and the Lord calls him to be a missionary, as
great as that is, it can be quite a scary thing.

He may think on one hand, “God
has given me a direction for my life,”
but then on the other hand he may
think “Which way should I go?” I
remember long conversations with
God, trying to convince Him to use
someone else and to just let me serve
in my local church. “God, I have a
good job and I am happy here!” This
went on for a year. For one miserable
year, I said, “Not so, LORD.” Well, I
guess it was more like “Not so, lord.”
Then one day I remember reading Proverbs
3:5–6: Trust in the Lord with all thine heart;
and lean not unto thine own understanding.

In all thy ways acknowledge him, and he shall
direct thy paths. From that point forward it
was no longer “Not so, lord,” but it was “What’s
next, LORD?”
My wife and I began to meet with our pastor
and pray about what our next steps were to
be after surrendering to the call to missions.

We also met with a couple of very well trusted
men of God—men who had much to do with
missions. We decided through prayer and
counsel that Bible college was a good place
to start. We began to pray about what to do
concerning a mission board. I met with men
from three different boards and began to seek
God’s guidance. Time and time again He laid
Baptist International Missions, Inc. (BIMI),
on our hearts. I could not count it more of a
blessing that He did. Allow me to share with
you some of the reasons why we believe God
wanted us to partner with BIMI.

28 BIMI has a proven track record. We are
brand new to missions. We have never been
to a mission field and never planted a church.

We did not want our mission board
to learn with us as we learned from
the field. The Lord used a veteran
missionary sent from our sending
church to remind us of the rich
heritage that BIMI has had over the
last 60 years. With the combined
God-given wisdom of the leadership
of BIMI, we just knew that God had
done some great things in their lives
and we wanted them to share those
experiences with us. We wanted
them to come alongside us through the tough
times of deputation and on the field. God has
not failed us in this regard. Everyone at BIMI
has been so encouraging—all the leadership
and the other missionaries. We are blessed to
be a part of an amazing missionary family.

BIMI has a passion to plant churches. We
believe that the way we will see this country
and the world turn to God will be through local
New Testament Baptist church plants. This is a
vision that is shared with BIMI. BIMI mainly
partners with missionaries who are church
planters. We believe that scripturally the way
that we saw God use the Apostle Paul to model
modern missions is through church planting.

With thousands of missionaries on the field
through the years and with so many churches
planted and so many won to the Lord, we knew
we wanted to be a part of the BIMI Church
Planting heritage.

BIMI has promised to remain faithful. We
live in a day when so many church leaders are
trying to change the way “church looks,” to