By Carol Reeves
Gazette-Times reporter | Posted: Saturday, May 5, 2007 12:00 am
Logger founded Worldwide Crusades in 1994 to train church leaders, offer free clinics
ALSEA - Most people think of Alsea as a small, rural town isolated from the rest of the world by the mist-covered mountains and thick stands of timber that encircle it.
But to dozens of struggling churches in Honduras, hundreds of AIDS orphans in Uganda and thousands of traumatized civil war victims in the Congo, Alsea is a haven of hope.
Several times a year, Alsea logger and pastor Bill Smith travels to another part of the globe to preach the gospel in large outdoor crusades, train national church leaders, offer free medical clinics or raise new church buildings.
Sometimes members of his church, Alsea Christian Fellowship, go with him, and a number of volunteers from other Oregon congregations participate in the ministry as well.
When Smith founded Worldwide Crusades in 1994, his preaching ministry was already well-established in Mexico, Belize and other parts of Latin America. But during the last 13 years, he's received invitations to go to Colombia, Argentina, Venezuela, parts of Europe, Mozambique, Zambia, Togo, Swaziland, Tanzania, Kenya and many other locations around the world.
"The ministry is expanding in many interesting ways," Smith said this week during a short visit home in between a trip to Burundi and Rwanda in April and another to Taiwan and China on May 14.
"This is totally different than anything I ever imagined," he said. "There's no way to describe how the doors have opened."
Getting started
Smith went to Northwest Christian College in Kirkland, Wash., to train for the pastorate, but after graduation he was approached by a friend of one of his professors who was the superintendent of the Alaska Lumber and Pulp Co. He was looking for someone to work in a large logging camp on one of the islands west of Ketchikan and also start a church there.
Smith agreed to take the job and spent five years in Alaska. In 1974, he decided it was time to move back to the Northwest.
But first, he wanted to visit a friend from college who was a missionary north of Acapulco in Mexico. The two traveled throughout the region, preaching every day in large outdoor venues, and Smith discovered a calling and a gift for leading evangelistic crusades.
Back in the United States, Smith continued to log and served as a bi-vocational pastor and evangelist throughout the Northwest. His next chance to preach abroad came in 1980 when he went to Belize to visit a man he had befriended in a Portland hospital while recovering from a serious logging accident in 1977. The friend introduced him to a pastor who invited him to preach in his church, which Smith did every night for 30 days.
In 1990, he conducted the first of many large crusades held in Honduras and other Latin American countries through the years. More than 265 churches have been started there as a result of Worldwide Crusades' ministry teams.
No fear
Conditions in places like El Salvador and Nicaragua were often tenuous, but Smith found Africa to be even more unsettling. Several times he and those traveling with him were forced to seek refuge from rebel violence.
He told of a trip to Togo - years before current security measures were put in place - where he was advised beforehand to bring a suitcase full of shotgun shells. Smith said he didn't understand why, but he did as told because it appeared to be the only way he might be allowed in the country.
When he got off the airplane, Smith was met by military officers, taken to a room and left alone for some time. He knew the capital was under fire, the country was under a curfew and there were military checkpoints at every turn. He did not know what might happen to him.
Eventually the soldiers came back, took the suitcase containing the ammunition and released him. While he was there, an unsuccessful coup staged from Ghana closed the borders and he could not leave for several more weeks.
"We had a great time, though. We preached every day and some miraculous things happened," Smith said.
He learned later that the shotgun shells were given to Togolese soldiers in what would be the equivalent of America's National Guard so they could hunt to provide food for their families because they were not being paid by the government. The memory of Smith's "gift" would lead authorities to give missionaries serving in West Africa permission to build an independent radio station in Togo.
Smith's crusades in Burundi, the Congo, Uganda, Rwanda and other war-torn nations have drawn up to 40,000 people at a time, with a majority of those responding positively to his gospel message.
The people in these regions have experienced horrible things - starvation, disease, the senseless slaughter of family members, Smith explained. "You can look into their eyes and see there's no hope there.
"But I have found that an encounter with Christ makes them happy for the first time in their life," Smith said.
Once the Worldwide Crusades contingent leaves, a network of national pastors work with the new converts to involve them in Bible study and local churches. Smith is confident Africa will be at the center of the next great revival movement.
God provides
Each year, the ministry's leadership team sits down to sort through all the invitations it receives and develop a budget for upcoming trips.
"We want to make sure there are funds available for what we want to do," Smith said, adding monies are needed to buy building materials or medical supplies and to pay native doctors to work in their free medical clinics. Up until the last few years, Worldwide Crusades led only one or two events abroad each year, but now it's at least three or four per year.
A trip to South America is set this summer, and a number of crusades and a youth conference are planned in Nicaragua and Costa Rica in the fall. In January 2008, Smith will return to northern Uganda, the Sudan, Kenya and Tanzania.
Volunteers pay their own way and, according to Smith, "We don't fly first class and we don't stay in top-notch hotels. We basically live like the natives do."
Up until 1994, Smith paid for all his travel expenses out of his own pocket, but once the nonprofit organization was established, other donations started coming into the ministry from individuals across the state, a few churches interested in the ministry and one anonymous donor outside the United States whose gifts "help a lot," Smith said.
When Smith goes to China in a few weeks, he will meet with a man who was moved by a video he saw of one of Smith's crusades in Africa and wants to support the work of Worldwide Crusades.
Smith said the offer was exciting because this was a Buddhist man who cared enough about the African people to want to join in such projects as providing better health care, clean water, schools and meeting other practical needs in desperate situations.
Financially, the Alsea church is a completely separate entity from Worldwide Crusades. It does not directly support Worldwide Crusades other than providing office space, a pool of eager volunteers and plenty of prayer support. Several of the teenagers have gone with Smith on mission trips and are involved in producing DVDs of the weekly worship services in Alsea that are sent to a Honduran television station for rebroadcast by satellite throughout North and South America and parts of northern Europe.
No end in sight
At 63, Smith could be looking forward to retirement and the possibility of going fishing and hunting whenever he wanted in the beautiful Alsea River and surrounding forest.
He admits he's still bothered sometimes by his logging injury from 1977 when he travels. The food isn't all that good and the trips are quite tiring, he added.
"But it's the people that keep you going," Smith said. "You literally have a chance to change history in places like Togo and Nicaragua where you're in the heart of a revolution."
But the impact isn't just overseas, he continued.
By changing the vision of the church to look beyond itself, people are more motivated to minister to both the world and to people in our own community, Smith said.
"We have the opportunity to change people's lives right here. The young people who have gone on our trips over the years have been changed and in our own church, it's changed how people look at the world," Smith said.
"Right now, I'm feeling better about what I'm doing and how I'm doing it than I ever have in my life."
Carol Reeves covers religion for the Gazette-Times. She can be reached by e-mail at carol.reeves@lee.net or by phone at 758-9516.