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ATLANTA – Christy McMillin-Goodwin has seen first-hand how funds from the Carter Offering for Religious Liberty and Human Rights, which is collected at the Fellowship’s annual General Assembly, make a difference in people’s lives.

 

Last year, she and 10 others from Oakland Baptist Church in Rock Hill, S.C., visited North Africa, where they saw African refugees continuing their education, thanks to scholarships awarded with Carter Offering funds.

 

“Africa loses thousands of skilled, educated workers each year to developed countries,” said McMillin-Goodwin, associate pastor at Oakland. Others, she said, become stranded in northern Africa often unable to finish their education.

 

“Students from sub-Saharan Africa are glad to be studying in North Africa even though they find the culture there difficult to live in,” she said. “They are discriminated against because their skin is dark, and they are Christians living in a Muslim country.

 

“Oftentimes, due to instability in their home countries or deaths of family members, their funds run out. When they do, the students are unable to pay their educational fees. They cannot renew their student visas, and they become illegal. Some of the best and brightest are stranded in North Africa – unable to finish their studies.”

 

The 37 scholarships awarded because of the Carter Offering help ensure that the future leaders of Africa have the opportunity to learn and eventually to lead their countries to a better future. A total of 260 people applied for the scholarships. All had to commit to return to their home countries to work toward improving human rights. Students are studying such subjects as medicine, city and environmental planning, agriculture and food preservation, geology and computer science.

 

The Carter Offering was first collected in 2005. One-third of each year’s offering goes to the Baptist World Alliance for its continuing efforts to fight for religious liberty. Two-thirds is administered by the Fellowship through partnering with organizations with on-going religious liberty initiatives.

 

The work in North Africa was made possible by the Carter Offering taken in 2006. That year, the recipients were the European Baptist Federation (EBF) and African Monitor, a project of Fellowship partner Bread for the World. EBF also received Carter Offering funds in 2007 and will again be the recipient of two-thirds of the offering taken at the 2008 General Assembly in Memphis.

 

“Receiving these funds was a great help to us just at the right time,” said Tony Peck, EBF’s General Secretary. “Over the past 18 months or so the EBF has been trying to increase its capacity to respond to issues of religious freedom.”

 

This includes the appointment of a part-time religious freedom representative in partnership with the Baptist Union of Sweden, and the establishment of the Thomas Helwys Centre for the Study of Religious Freedom at International Baptist Theological Seminary in Prague.

 

“In 2009 we celebrate the 400th anniversary of the first Baptist congregation in Amsterdam, The Netherlands,” Peck said. “Out of that congregation came Thomas Helwys’ first plea for religious freedom for all. The EBF is proud to stand in that tradition and wants to respond more effectively to cases of individual persecution, such as the Baptists pastor imprisoned in Azerbaijan last year, or difficulties causes by religious laws which discriminate against Baptists and other religious minorities, such as in Serbia or Belarus.” 

 

The 2008 funds from the Carter Offering will be specifically used to fund fact-finding visits to places where religious freedom is under threat, Peck said.

 

In North Africa, McMillin-Goodwin said the students her group talked with are happy to be able to continue their schooling.

 

“They asked for prayer for them as they study in the difficult environment and that they will be able to make a difference in their home countries,” she said.

 

“I am thrilled that CBF is working to effect change among the most neglected peoples of the world,” she said. “Africa is the forgotten continent. I’m glad that CBF has not forgotten it. CBF is not just putting a band-aid on a difficult situation. CBF is striving to change the systems that allow poverty, disease, famine, and war to exist.  With the efforts CBF is putting into funding student scholarships through the Carter Offering, real change can happen.”

 

To learn more about the Carter Offering, go to www.thefellowship.info/carteroffering.   To give to the Carter Offering, send your check payable to Cooperative Baptist Fellowship, P.O. Box 101699, Atlanta, GA., 30392. Designate “Carter Offering” in the memo line.

 

CBF is a fellowship of Baptist Christians and churches who share a passion for the Great Commission and a commitment to Baptist principles of faith and practice. The Fellowship’s mission is to serve Christians and churches as they discover and fulfill their God-given mission.