By Don Bolding
Killeen Daily Herald Anderson Chapel African Methodist Episcopal Church in Killeen recognizes no earthly bounds to its vision of reaching out in ministry.
A neighborhood congregation in eastern Killeen calling itself "the church on the hill in the valley of love," it divides its outreach in four dimensions – local, regional, hemispheric and global.
"Local" includes the church's Mission House, which has served the needs of about 2,400 people since its inception, including more than 950 this year.
"Regional" includes receiving families from New Orleans after the Hurricane Katrina floods and seeing them return home to keep supporting the church from afar. The former guests recently sent $1,000 for a new air conditioner.
"Hemispheric" includes mission trips to Jamaica by its pastor, the Rev. William M. Campbell Jr., and others in the congregation, and "global" means eight trips so far to African nations, the most recent to Liberia.
Campbell served as principal preacher and lecturer for a Liberian annual conference and toured A.M.E. University, the second largest college in Liberia after the national university. He stayed for a week after the three-day annual conference to lead a local pastors' workshop. He and colleagues were able to talk with Liberian Vice President Joseph Boakai.
Campbell makes regional and global trips alone first, then returns to the country with members of the congregation to address pressing needs however they can. He said the Rev. Dr. David G. Reynolds and his Greater Vision Community Church joined Anderson Chapel in assisting his Liberian mission.
The A.M.E. Church, organized in annual and general conferences like the United Methodist Church, has missions all over Africa. The Liberian bishop since 2004, David R. Daniels, is one of only three indigenous A.M.E. bishops on the continent.
All the rest, since the initial missionary push by Bishop Henry Turner 100 years ago, have been from the United States. The A.M.E. denomination took an early interest in Liberia since the country was founded by freed slaves returning home.
Aside from a 35-bed hospital in Monrovia, the capital, the A.M.E. thrust in Liberia is education. With funding from an unnamed Canadian philanthropist, the church has built 30 primary schools plus Monrovia College, really a high school with 1,500 students, and the 3,300-student university, which also hosts 50 exchange students from the United States. The U.S. State Department granted $1.2 million to build the university.
"Education is the key to developing the country and serving the people's needs," Campbell said. "Otherwise, children have to step into their fathers' shoes working on the rubber plantations and get locked into that for life. And did you see the conditions in the movie 'Blood Diamond'? That was accurate."
After the years of unrest that plagued the nation until recently, forcing church officials to flee their offices and homes, Bishop Daniels and his wife found his degree from Allen University in a flea market in Ghana and had to buy it back. They found their wedding album under similar circumstances.
Campbell, who recently graduated from George W. Truett Theological Seminary at Baylor University, has special interests in missions, evangelism and church planting. He recently celebrated his 30th year in ministry.
With several trips to Sierra Leone and one to Kenya behind him, he is now planning a mission to Zambia.
He said, "Journeys like these help you keep your life in perspective. Are you a servant or a star? You see preachers here with million-dollar houses and Mercedes-Benzes, but a pastor in Africa is happy with a new Bible and a bicycle, which he'll ride 20 miles to win one soul. I met a pastor who'd had his head split open in the conflict who was back on his bicycle in a week."
Emphasizing the importance of keeping the home fires burning, he credited both the teams he takes with him on missions and the ones who stay home. "We're like a pair of scissors," he said. "One blade moves and the other stays still. You have to have both."
One of Anderson Chapel's founding members, Alice Douse, is among the ones who "stays still." She said, "The church supports the missions financially and sends supplies and mission materials with the groups. We sent a computer and other things to give the people in Jamaica. Usually six or eight will go on the trips, plus some young people. A group went to New Orleans right after Katrina, and everybody spent their time working.
"We make sure they have all they need."
Teaching his congregation on a recent Wednesday night–his birthday and the day after his anniversary in ministry–he described what he's trying to do all over the world.
"Our mission is to engender hope and empowerment," he said. "Hope lifts people's spirits, but it's just hanging on in the faith that things will improve, that tomorrow will be better. Empowerment is figuring out how we'll make it better. In Liberia, it was the people there who were making their own bricks and building the schools themselves.
"In the same pattern, preaching is declaring the word of God, but ministry is how we do what we declare. And this is a constant process. If nothing needed changing, we'd have a utopia. But Jesus said the poor would be with us always, and so anointing for ministry will go on and on.
"The 5,000 we feed today will be the feeders of tomorrow."