After a year, Bill and Roberta Campbell are halfway to their goal.

hundred thousand dollar bill

by Howard Gwartney

I have known Bill Campbell for at least 40 years. What I didn’t know for many years is that he and I attended the same high school and even had the same English teacher (albeit 30 years apart). Bill once came to my home church, Locust Grove FWB Church in Oklahoma, trying to get Green Stamps, of all things, in order to buy an airplane for a mission work in Alaska. (By the way, eventually he was able to buy that plane!) I even had the privilege of taking part in the memorial service for his first wife, Sandra.

For years this couple worked tirelessly for Home Missions as lay ambassadors, helping to establish new Free Will Baptist churches.

After Sandra’s death, Bill met and married Roberta (Rosser). During a visit to the new mission work in Arizona, the couple caught a vision to help establish another Free Will Baptist church. Roberta had never seen what a new church has to do to get started. She didn’t know that a church plant sometimes has to meet in rented facilities for years before the church can afford to buy property. As she watched us set up “portable church” that weekend, God burdened her heart to do something to help our ministry.

Right off the bat, the Campbells made a sizeable gift to our land fund. Then, they committed to travel for a year to help us raise $100,000. After a year, they had reached half of their goal, and Christ’s Church Free Will Baptist in Arizona was able to purchase a 4.82 acre piece of land within a year of our launch!

Bill works for Western Express as a safety officer and travels extensively. When time permits, he and Roberta schedule services in various churches and present the goals for our Arizona church plant. They have decided to travel on our behalf for one more year to complete their original $100,000 goal. 

I won’t spoil it for you by telling Bill’s remarkable story about how he came to know the Lord. But if your church gets a call from Bill Campbell asking if he can come to your church on behalf of home missionaries in Arizona, I can attest that his testimony will be both challenging and encouraging to your church family. The Campbell’s cover their own expenses, and any offering you receive for the work in Arizona is submitted to the Home Missions Department the day they return home.

We can’t thank Bill and Roberta enough for their friendship and faithfulness to the Lord. Their zeal to plant churches across America encourages all of us.
 

About the Writer: Howard Gwartney is a home missionary to Christ’s Church FWB Church in Florence, AZ. Learn more about the church at www.christschurchfwb.org.