Local Church Has ‘Out of this World’ Program

Madison, AL, August 21, 2007 --(PR.com)-- The young people of Skyline Baptist Church conduct a Missionaries Are Really Special (MARS) project in which they provide gifts for worldwide missionaries who participate in the church’s Missions Conference each September. This year is the 13th year of the project. The remarkable feature of this program is that the church’s children and teenagers are responsible for making it work.

For 52 weeks on Sunday evenings the youth and children bring their MARS offerings. Just before the Missions Conference, these offerings are used to purchase hundreds of gifts for distribution to the participating missionaries and their families. On the closing day of the conference week (Saturday morning) the young people distribute the gifts as the church members joyfully watch. Everyone present is overwhelmed by the display of love. It amazes them to see the sacrifice of these young people and the effect it has on the missionaries who, themselves, sacrifice to serve others.

Skyline Baptist Church began using the Faith Promise approach to mission giving in 1995 and this continues to be the focus of the local church’s worldwide missions program. Since 1995 the church has given nearly $700,000 to support specific missionaries who serve to spread the Gospel throughout the world. They currently support missionaries who serve in more than 25 foreign countries and various North American locations.

Skyline Baptist is a community church located in the heart of North Alabama. It is nestled between the cities of Madison and Huntsville. A modest-sized church, located on Slaughter Road just north of Old Madison Pike, it’s just a few miles from the U.S. Space and Rocket Center and NASA’s Marshall Space Flight Center. But to the young people of this church, MARS means so much more than the planet we have recently begun to explore.

The Skyline 2007 Missionary Conference is planned for September 12-16. On Wednesday, Thursday and Friday Night at 7:00 PM invited missionaries will relate their experiences. Saturday, September 15, the young people will shower the missionaries with gifts. Then, following the Sunday Morning service, the members will anonymously commit to give through the Faith Promise. And during the Evening Service at 5:00 PM on September 16, the young people of Skyline Baptist Church will begin another year-long project to show that Missionaries Are Really Special.

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