Missions at First

At First Baptist Church of Erwin, missions is simply love in motion. It is the way we live out the compassion of Christ—among our own members who need care and among our neighbors near and far. We believe that every act of kindness, every prayer lifted, and every hand offered in service is part of God’s work in the world.

Our mission efforts fall into two connected expressions:
Shut-in and Sunshine Work and Community & Global Outreach.

Shut-in and Sunshine Work

Every church family has dear ones who are no longer able to attend worship in person. They may be homebound, living in assisted care, or navigating illness or mobility challenges. These members remain an important part of us—cherished, remembered, and held close.

Shut-in and Sunshine Work ensures that the fellowship of our church continues to reach them.

Through handwritten cards, prayer quilts, home visits, shared meals, phone calls, and home communion, we carry the love and presence of Christ into living rooms, hospital rooms, and quiet afternoon kitchens. This ministry is gentle, personal, and steady. It reminds each person:
You are not forgotten. You are loved.

Anyone in the congregation may take part—no special training needed, just a caring spirit and a willingness to show up with kindness.

Community Outreach

We love Erwin. We love Unicoi County. And we believe that the church should be a neighbor in the fullest sense of the word.

Besides the hundreds of people reached each week by the Main Street Market Food Pantry, our local outreach work includes:

School partnerships and support for students and teachers through Blessing of the Backpacks
Food and hygiene collections for families in need
Support for community agencies caring for vulnerable and elderly neighbors through utilities assistance

These efforts are rooted in relationship, not just distribution. We show up to serve as neighbors who know each other by name, not as strangers passing by.

Global and State Missions

Our love reaches beyond our town through mission partnerships that share compassion, relief, and the hope of Christ around the world.

We support and cooperate with both the Southern Baptist Convention and the Cooperative Baptist Fellowship in the United States and internationally. This reflects the breadth of our church’s heritage and the shared mission we believe all Christians participate in.

Through these partners, we support the work of:

Global Cooperative Baptist Fellowship (CBF)
Tennessee Cooperative Baptist Fellowship (TCBF)
Southern Baptist Convention International & North American Missions (SBC)
Tennessee Baptist Convention (TBC)

We also participate in these annual mission offerings:

Global Offering for CBF Missions: Supports long-term field personnel and justice-based ministries around the world

Annie Armstrong Easter Offering: Supports North American mission efforts and church planting (SBC)

Lottie Moon Christmas Offering: Supports international missionaries serving globally (SBC)

The Golden Offering for Tennessee Missions: Funds ministries and mission work across the state of Tennessee

Each gift—large or small—joins with thousands of others to provide relief, discipleship, and tangible help where it is needed most.

Everyone Has a Part to Play

No one serves alone. Some give. Some visit. Some cook. Some write cards. Some pray faithfully from home. All are needed. All are valued. All are part of the work God is doing through our church.

If you would like to participate in Shut-in and Sunshine Work, community outreach, or global mission support, please contact the church business office. We would be honored to serve alongside you.

Same Work; New Names

This Christmas, and in the seasons that follow, First Baptist will receive its missions offerings under new names. The Charlotte White Offering for Foreign Missions, the Alma Hunt Offering for Home Missions, and the Jodie Brown Offering for Local Missions are the same three offerings this congregation has given to faithfully for generations. The envelopes will look a little different. The work they fund will not.

It is worth remembering that the names we have known are themselves names we chose. Southern Baptists took up a Christmas offering for foreign missions for thirty years before it was named for Lottie Moon in 1918, and the Easter offering for home missions was nearly forty years old before it took Annie Armstrong’s name in 1934. Both women were honored because their lives told the story of the offering better than any slogan could. In choosing new names, the Committee on Missions has tried to do exactly what those earlier Baptists did: find women whose stories carry the meaning of the gift.

Charlotte White’s story reaches further back than any of them. In 1815 she became the first American woman officially appointed as a missionary, sent by the Baptist Board for Foreign Missions to India. When the Board would not pay her way, she paid it herself. She founded schools for boys and girls and spent her life proving that the Gospel travels on ordinary courage. Alma Hunt, born in Roanoke in 1909, led the Woman’s Missionary Union for twenty-six years, the very years in which Lottie Moon and Annie Armstrong became household names in Baptist churches like ours. She was ordained to the ministry late in life, and Virginia Baptists have given an offering in her name since 1998. And Jodie Brown needs no introduction in Erwin. For eighty-four years she was a member of this church, for more than forty of them she led the Junior Department, and before we had a bus she brought children to Sunday School in her own motorcar. Erwin named her Citizen of the Year in 1964. Her own church called her a true home missionary.

These are not new names pulled from the air. They are Baptist names, rooted in two centuries of Baptist missions, and in Miss Jodie’s case rooted in our own pews. As First Baptist continues to explore its denominational partnerships, the Committee on Missions wanted names that belong to this congregation rather than to any single convention or agency, so that whatever shape those partnerships take in the years ahead, our offerings will remain ours.

What will not change is where the money goes. In this first year, gifts to the Charlotte White Offering will support both Cooperative Baptist and Southern Baptist missionaries serving on the foreign field, and gifts to the Alma Hunt Offering will support both Cooperative Baptist and Southern Baptist missionaries serving here in the United States. The Jodie Brown Offering will go directly to the Main Street Market Food Pantry, which feeds our neighbors in Erwin and Unicoi County. The missionaries are the same people. The hungry are the same families. The need, if anything, is greater than it has ever been: fewer churches are supporting more fields, and the pantry shelves in our own town empty faster every year.

First Baptist has been a missions church since 1822. We have changed hymnals, buildings, pastors, and yes, the names on our offering envelopes. We have never changed our conviction that we have a story to tell to the nations, and to the town that gave us Miss Jodie.

Plan. Save. Give.