Race for the Future

SMOKY MOUNTAIN RESORT MINISTRIES

RACE FOR THE FUTURE

 

The wheels have come off my race car!  I still have my Royal Ambassador race car from 1964.  I can remember racing it until the axles wore out and the wheels came off.  I look at it and know a system of missions education and missions support that shaped my early life.  I look at it and know that I became a Southern Baptist missionary to fulfill the call of God upon my life that began so early. 

Denominational missions has been the vehicle that God gave me to fulfill my call as a resort missionary.  Like that race car, I have ridden denominational missions with great energy and excitement.  Now, the wheels have come off that vehicle!

I have been a Southern Baptist missionary since 1981.  Now, the North American Mission Board and the Tennessee Baptist Convention have withdrawn their support of Smoky Mountain Resort Ministries and of me.  The official announcement states:  “The Administration of the Executive Board of the Tennessee Baptist Convention has made the difficult decision to cease funding for Smoky Mountain Resort Ministries effective September 30, 2014.  This decision has not been reached lightly and is in response in a decrease in funding available from the North American Mission Board and from the Tennessee Baptist Convention Cooperative Program.”

God has not changed my calling nor changed the missions need of Gatlinburg, Pigeon Forge, and Sevier County, Tennessee.  God has not released me from Smoky Mountain Resort Ministries.  The Sevier County Association of Baptist responded to the announcement of the Tennessee Baptist Convention with a vote to maintain Smoky Mountain Resort Ministries (SMRM) and to affirm Bill Black as its Director.  These local Baptist churches will continue to support SMRM with their limited financial resources and their powerful love. 

The missional model of SMRM remains healthy, active, and God-blessed.  People around our ministry are responding daily to our loving and creative works of evangelism, ministry, and church growth.  God’s blessing remains on SMRM.

The business model of SMRM is now open to new possibilities.  SMRM must raise its own funding to continue.  SMRM must find $168,000 per year to continue on its current active level.  That means we need $14,000 per month to continue as God has us working now.

Would you become the wheels for this ministry?  Would you commit to funding one month of SMRM?   Would you commit to raising a month’s support?  

Gifts can be sent to SMRM, P.O. Box 114, Gatlinburg, TN 37738.  Please mark your gifts for “future”.  Gifts are tax deductible.  Contact Bill at bill@smrm.org or 865-607-4076 to get involved in helping this plan into the future. 

Your commitment to support on any level will put the wheels on a new vehicle.

We can do this.  God will do this.  

 

 

Current Ministries Through Past Experiences

    SMRM has been in existence for 38 years with all 38 of those years having found a home in our beloved Camp Smoky. Hundreds of volunteers and staff have passed through this ministry building, and some return as staff for another year, as supportive house parents, or as encouraging visitors. No matter how much time has passed they always enter with the same comment-- "Nothing has changed!"
   On Friday night the SMRM dorm brought in three generations of SMRM volunteers that once worshipped and learned in that same living space years before. The 2014 staff welcomed Sherry Cothran-Woolsey, a Methodist pastor and musician serving in Nashville, and her husband Patrick. Sherry served as a summer missionary in the 1980s but connected deeply with Tracy Hartman, the current house parent of  Virginia who is a professor at the Baptist Theological Seminary in Richmond who served on staff on the 1970s. One speaks through written teaching, the other through song, but both women are passionate about promoting the stories of courageous women in the Bible to in turn empower modern day women to have their own voices heard. These women are part of SMRM's history but continue to shape the present and future of our organization through their insight and depth.