Douglas Allison and Mark Etherington of Bible Church of Little Rock tell the story of how they got involved in MEDA International Missions, as well as what they learned and experienced regarding the importance of partnering with a likeminded ministry that prioritizes a relationship with the local church.
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Mark came to Honduras for the first time in 2009. Pastor Carlos Montoya of Bethany Baptist Church had spoken earlier that year at a missions conference in BCLR and introduced the congregation to the ministry in Honduras. At that point, MEDA International Missions was not an established organization, but its foundations were being formed.
At the same time, it was BCLR’s goal and desire to incrementally engage the youth in short-term missions, from stepping out locally, to flying to a different context, to serving overseas – missions that Douglas had participated in growing up.
“Our objective and philosophy was that we would go and serve in an area where, when we left, we were leaving anybody that was impacted by the Gospel – through the ministry that we were involved in – in the hands of a solid, Bible-believing church, teaching the Gospel and teaching the truth of God’s Word,” Mark says.
The first time they stepped foot on Honduran soil, their efforts were cut short by the military coup of 2009. Changes within the church didn’t provide the opportunity to return until 2017 – eight years later –at which point Douglas had graduated from seminary and was itching to reignite the fire. Since then, BCLR has served in Honduras four more times, building on their relationship with the global church in Siguatepeque, HN and developing, on each occasion, a deeper love and increasing desire to go back.
Through their partnership with MEDA International Missions, BCLR witnessed firsthand the biblical efficacy of a focus on the local church in short-term missions.
“One of the main goals that I often talk about with our team as we come is that we're not trying to be front and center. We're trying to provide a platform for the local church to stand on,” Douglas says.
Their desire is to help the community become more aware of what the local church is already doing – joining in on their efforts instead of getting in the way of them and assuming they could do better.
“This work didn't develop here in a day or overnight, and for us to come in thinking with our pride that we're going to come in and do something for the Lord and to help these people is a big mistake,” Mark says.
Just last year, Douglas, Mark, and seven other team members from Bible Church of Little Rock rendezvoused with Faith, a one-month intern sent ahead of them to engineer blueprints for various projects in Honduras – including the concrete steps that their team would construct for Bethany Clinic, a medical ministry of Bethany Baptist Church.
They ventured into the communities where the local pastors had been ministering, engaging young and old with their testimonies and an invitation to an evangelistic service at Bethany Baptist Church. This afforded an opportunity for many, who had known where the church was without ever attending, to hear the Gospel. By God’s grace, that Wednesday evening, a number of those invited walked through those church doors for the first time.
For Douglas and Mark, this trip reinforced the importance of being choosy about who you partner with in ministry, particularly in terms of short-term missions.
“A ministry evolves from the church, not the other way around, which is often the case in a lot of international missions and missions organizations,” Mark says. “But to see this [referring to MIM] developed out of the ministry of a Bible-believing church is impactful in the sense that it’s following a biblical model, and then it’s also training and developing men who will preach the Gospel here or in their own Spanish-speaking countries.”
Douglas shares that there were times when he participated in mission trips that weren’t as fruitful as they should have been, due to an oversight in prudent partnership or effective ministry in another country.
“It is a formative experience to go on a short-term missions trip that is done well,” he says. He often notices that those involved in well-executed short-term missions are pleasantly surprised by both the cultural differences in the global church and the remarkable number of things that are the same.
Not only, as Mark says, is there “a sense of camaraderie and a unity that I believe is biblical for believers of all nations, tongues, etcetera,” but according to Douglas, “One of the big things that we always ask at some point is, ‘What are they modeling for us that we can learn from? And how can we bring that back, either to our personal lives or to the church?’”
These sentiments are the result of a ministry that starts and ends with the local church. And that starts with humble servants like Douglas and Mark leading the youth of their church by example to minister alongside the local church in Honduras, to the end that they return emboldened and encouraged to serve the widows and orphans at home.
“Going on a mission trip like this is – it’s not our ministry but the Lord’s ministry,” Mark says. “I think that this kind of a trip really helps all of us to take an inside look at ourselves and ask ourselves, are we about…what we want to accomplish? Or are we about what the Holy Spirit is going to do through us and with us as we come alongside people that are living here, day in and day out, and are doing a lot of things behind the scenes that we don’t know about?”