Grand Avenue Baptist Church

Sermons App Groups

Mission Moments

Up-to-date mission news, events, and prayer requests

Mission Moment

November 17, 2024 • Scott Ward

Each year on the Sunday before Thanksgiving, we take up a special offering called the For The City Offering. 100% of the money raised for this offering goes towards our church's efforts to reach the city for Christ through local outreach events and by partnering with local faith-based nonprofits. Please be in prayer for what you and your family might give towards this offering.

Mission Moment

November 10, 2024 • Scott Ward

Rooted in James 1:27 and reflected throughout all of Scripture, this special day will encourage our church to engage deeply in adoption, foster care, global orphan care and wrap-around family support — central to living as disciples of Christ. We will join churches in over 120 countries that have witnessed the transformative power of this day to catalyze action and celebrate all that God is doing in our communities on behalf of vulnerable children and families. Before and after our Worship Service, we will host information tables where you can learn about getting more involved. These tables will be located in the Guest Services area.

Mission Moment

November 3, 2024 • Scott Ward

We are excited to be able to allow Connected Foster Care to office out of our church. They provide missional families with the option to welcome vulnerable children through private foster care. Plus, they lead our Southern Baptist churches to support those foster families by meeting their specific needs, providing freezer meals, providing respite care, and many other things. Find out more about their ministry at http://www.abcfm.org/foster-care

Mission Moment

October 27, 2024 • Scott Ward

Community Rescue Mission is one of our local mission partnerships here in Fort Smith. CRM is a shelter and transitional housing for homeless families with children. They are looking for some of our Community Groups to pick one night per month in 2025 to go over cook the evening meal and serve it. It is 4pm-6pm and only takes 3-4 people. If your Community Group is interested in taking an evening, email Scott Ward at mailto:scott@gabc.church, and he will send you the available dates.

Mission Moment

October 20, 2024 • Scott Ward

April 23 - May 2 we have been asked by our global workers in South Asia to provide child programming and child care for a big retreat and training time for the children of many of the global workers around the country. We are needing at least 15 people to go. The estimated cost of the trip will be $3000 depending upon airline tickets. If you are interested in going, please email mailto:scott@gabc.church ASAP.

Mission Moment

October 6, 2024 • Scott Ward

We have a large trailer leaving FBC Booneville going to the SBC Disaster Relief staging area in Morristown, Tennessee to get much needed supplies to the victims of Hurricane Helene and the resultant flooding. We will be collecting items until Sunday morning, October 13th. The truck will leave that evening. This is a list given to us by Send Relief. You can drop the supplies off in the Mission Area of Guest Services.

Mission Moment

September 29, 2024 • Scott Ward

On October 13th, we would like to invite you and your family to go over to the Activities Building immediately following the Sunday morning worship service. You will find a booth fair featuring all of our different partnerships. You are encouraged to visit each of our booths to learn more about each individual mission partnership. Different booths will have different kinds of exotic foods to try and activities for your children.

Mission Moment

September 22, 2024 • Scott Ward

For a couple of years now we have been partnering with Compassion International to provide support for over 250 children through three churches in Ethiopia. On this upcoming Sunday we will be emphasizing this partnership and making two calls: 1. to continue your sponsorship, if you are already sponsoring a child, and 2. to sponsor a child or additional children. Be sure and come by Guest Services that morning to enjoy some Ethiopian coffee and popcorn!

Mission Moment

September 15, 2024 • Scott Ward

For The City: Throughout the month of September our Community Groups are collecting snacks for our different fire stations. See below for more information. Christmas at Emmanuel: We are collecting Christmas presents for the children at Orphanage Emmanuel in Honduras. For more information, email Emma Pratt - http://godfreyblack.com Compassion Sunday: On October 6, we will be celebrating our partnership in Ethiopia with Compassion International. We hope that you will consider sponsoring a child that Sunday. Go Day: October 13 is our annual Go Day where we will have a booth fair of all of our mission partnerships in the gym after the worship service during our Community Group time.

Mission Moment

September 8, 2024 • Scott Ward, Emma Pratt

Be sure and come by the Mission Area in Guest Services to find out how you can pick out gifts to get for the children at Orphanage Emmanuel. Look for the Christmas tree! Over the next month, we will be collecting items to send to Orphanage Emmanuel in Honduras for their big Christmas celebration in December. You are also welcome to donate towards the cost of shipping the container. We want to send out a huge thank you to ArcBest for providing transportation from Fort Smith to where the containers are located in Tennessee.

Mission Moment

September 1, 2024 • Scott Ward

Throughout the month of September, we will be doing things to encourage our firefighters throughout the city and surrounding area. Each Community Group will be assigned a different fire station, and we will encourage the group to collect snacks for the first few weeks of September. Then, towards the end of the month, your group can deliver the snacks to the station along with some encouragement cards. Fire Station #1: Monday Class Fire Station #2: Reach & Adult 9 Fire Station #3: Adult 4 Fire Station #4: Women of Heart Fire Station #5: Median Adult 1 Fire Station #6: Median Adult 2 & Young Adult 2 Fire Station #7: Young Adult 3 Fire Station #8: Young Adult 4 & YoPro Married Fire Station #9: Median Adult 3 Fire Station #10: Young Adult 1 & Adult 7 Fire Station #11: Adult 6 & YoPro

Mission Moment

August 25, 2024 • Scott Ward

Join us on a very special mission trip to Tanzania to work with national pastors and their wives in the Pare Mountains. The trip will be November 5-15 to the village of Same (Sah-may) in Northern Tanzania right next to Mount Kilimanjaro. We will be working with our national partner, Fanuel Kiroka. If you are interested in this trip or future trips to Tanzania, email mailto:scott@gabc.church.

Mission Moment

August 18, 2024 • Scott Ward

We will be hosting a free lunch after Community Groups in Room 120 on Sunday, August 25th to anyone interested in hearing more about the CarePortal. Matt Whitson from the Arkansas Family Alliance will be with us to do the training. It will be no more than one hour of your time, plus some good pizza! There is no obligation. Our church is excited to partner with Arkansas Family Alliance and the CarePortal. CarePortal creates a platform to connect churches and child welfare agencies to address the needs of hurting children and families. This technology uses a geographically-based email system that strategically addresses all areas of child welfare. These areas include helping prevent families from entering state care, foster care, adoption, and kids aging out of the system.

Mission Moment

August 11, 2024 • Scott Ward

If you give to our church, you might know that a percentage of every dollar you give goes to the Cooperative Program (CP) of the Southern Baptist Convention. The CP is used to fund different entities. One of these entities is the International Mission Board (IMB) which is tasked to send out missionaries from our churches to reach the world for Christ. They have begun a new program called Project 3000 (http://www.imb.org/project-3000). This project's goal is to send out over 300 missionary explorers to research the last remaining 3000 people groups in the world that are unreached and unengaged.

Mission Moment

August 4, 2024 • Scott Ward

We just got done with our Mission Trip to Wyoming to work with the Northern Arapaho on the Wind River Indian Reservation. It was a great trip, and we all had lots of gospel conversations. We also got to help Mountain Grace Church in Dubois, WY do their VBS this year. We went there each of the three mornings. Next year’s trip, if you are interested will be July 25 - August 2, 2025.