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Shaun Pillay, associate pastor, Olive Baptist Church, is a third-generation International Mission Board<\/a> convert, whose grandmother was introduced to Christ by missionaries who went to their village in South Africa. Missions is his heart as he has served with the North American Mission Board<\/a> and been on multiple mission trips. Through a survey of the congregation, Pillay learned that people wanted more information about missions, \u00a0such as: Where does the money go and how is it used? What role do ministry partners like the Florida Baptist Convention<\/a>, International Mission Board, North American Mission Board, Bible Mission<\/a> and others play in missions at home and abroad?<\/p>\n \u201cThe church was longing for awareness, connectedness and opportunities for involvement,\u201d said Pillay. As a result, the church developed Commissioned \u2026 Called to Go<\/em>, a three-day conference bringing awareness of how church members can be part of the Great Commission through prayer, giving, volunteerism and missions trips.<\/p>\n Guests from 22 international missions partners and 12 local missions partners represented 18 countries.<\/p>\n The week of the conference, Bible Mission parked the Bible Truck<\/a>, an 18-wheeler that houses an exhibit of the Bible, at Olive Baptist Church. A walk-through of the \u201crooms\u201d of the truck shows the history of the Bible, how various translations came to be, how the church has been persecuted because of the word of God and how the Bible has been smuggled through history.<\/p>\n \u201cMany non-believers walk through and come out asking questions of how can they have this hope and know Jesus,\u201d said Cook.<\/p>\n On Friday evening, more than 700 attendees heard Pillay share a vision to move the church \u201cfrom the pew to purpose.\u201d On Saturday, a guest from Bible Mission shared the importance of short-term mission trips, which resulted in people signing up for mission trips to places like Moldova and Sweden.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n Part of missions is reaching unreached people groups. Olive Baptist Church showed a commitment last summer by asking children at vacation Bible school to donate money to fund a Bible written in the heart language of an unreached people group. The children showed up and raised more than the goal; the deacons showed out by matching the $6,400 raised by the children, and the church went above and beyond by raising $64,000 within a three-week period. The printed Bible was presented during the conference, resulting in children jumping for joy to understand how they can participate in missions.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n Sunday, the conference culminated with a sermon from Ted Traylor, senior pastor, Olive Baptist Church and a special message from a London-based Bible Mission guest.<\/p>\n The church prayed for missions and observed the Lord\u2019s supper, followed by a feast featuring cuisine from 18 nationalities. \u201cThe call to observe and remember is universal,\u201d said Pillay. \u201cDuring the supper, language did not matter.\u201d<\/p>\n As church members feasted on international cuisine from China, Russia, Brazil and Spain, they sang hymns and fellowshipped with believers from different nationalities and backgrounds.<\/p>\n The church was Commissioned \u2026 Called to Give<\/em>, and they gave sacrificially and generously during the weekend, raising $391,000 for missions, including funding three more Bible translations for unreached people groups.<\/p>\n \u201cThis was the most encouraging and challenging weekend for our church family to reach neighbors and nations,\u201d said Traylor.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" \u201cMany people have a view of missions as being overseas and around the world, but it is here in Pensacola and across the street too,\u201d said Sean Cook, director of mobilization, Olive Baptist Church.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":76,"featured_media":50594,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"ep_exclude_from_search":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[11,17,20,23,25,51],"tags":[1051,15,167,176],"class_list":["post-49744","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-expanding","category-missions","category-partnership","category-sharing","category-stories","category-region-west","tag-commissioned-called-to-go-conference","tag-international-mission-board","tag-north-american-mission-board","tag-olive-baptist-church"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/flbaptist.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/49744","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/flbaptist.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/flbaptist.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/flbaptist.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/76"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/flbaptist.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=49744"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/flbaptist.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/49744\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":67853,"href":"https:\/\/flbaptist.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/49744\/revisions\/67853"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/flbaptist.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/50594"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/flbaptist.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=49744"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/flbaptist.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=49744"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/flbaptist.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=49744"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}<\/a>\n<\/a>\n