Gardners Travel to England to Support Church Planters

By: Sammy Mull, Shield Editor 

Mr. Tim Gardner (Construction Technology program coordinator) and Mrs. Julie Gardner (kindergarten teacher) traveled to England this summer on a mission trip with Providence Baptist Church. While there, they worked with International Mission Board missionaries to encourage and support them.  

The Gardners built relationships with the people they visited. “The mission was to go and work with missionaries in Liverpool and London, specifically, to encourage them, to support them, to work alongside them, to help them with whatever needs they had,” Mr. Gardner explained. 

Mrs. Gardner shared that they worked on specific projects to help the church planters. In Liverpool, they worked with Shawn and Joy Price, helping with a Family Fun Day to connect the church with local communities. In London, their focus was more directly on door-to-door evangelism in neighborhoods near the church plants.  

The experience had a significant impact on both teachers. Mr. Gardner said that it made him realize how isolating the experience of being overseas and away from their support network in the US is for missionaries and how important it is to have short-term teams come alongside the long-term church planters.  

He shared about the difficulties missionary families encounter living in a different culture: “The son of our missionaries that we worked with in London—he’s going to a public school, and he said, ‘I’m the only Christian in the whole school of over 1,000 students.’”  

Mrs. Gardner said the trip changed her heart toward missions. “It really built in me more of a heart for missions. I don’t know that I always had a heart for missions, necessarily. But I saw how the people there are just so hungry for fellowship with other Christians. Their kids don’t have Christian schools to go to easily or big churches to go to. Their circle of Christian friends and people to fellowship with is very small. They’re very hungry for that [biblical community], so it really built in my heart just a love for missions work,” she said.  

The personal relationships she built while on mission in Liverpool opened the door for Mrs. Gardner's kindergarten class to adopt the Price family as their class missionaries. To make the connection even more special, the Gardners found out that Joy is an NRCA alum. “That’s just a connection that God made that only God can do.”  

Their experience on the short-term mission trip is shaping the Gardners’ plans for next summer. “We fell in love with the people of Liverpool, particularly,” Mr. Gardner said, noting they were asked to return next year to lead a new short-term mission team.