Lindsay Wineinger and her husband, Nathan, credit their home church for giving them a solid foundation and a sound calling to missions. Lindsay and Nathan met at Woodland Baptist Church in Peoria—in the nursery, as babies. Lindsay’s father, Mark Davis, is education director at the church. His father, George, was also a pastor for many decades.
Lindsay and Nathan look back at their thirty years in church life, and very soon they are talking about mission trips they took as young adults—to Chicago, Indiana, Alaska, Puerto Rico—that gave them both a heart for missions.
“We went to Brazil, we’ve been to Senegal together, and we’ve traveled the world because that’s what God called us to do,” Nathan said.
“Your world gets bigger,” Lindsay said of mission service, “and I think it’s super important in developing your children around knowing the needs of others at a very young age.”
Today the Wineingers live in his hometown of Princeville just north of Peoria, where they’re raising three girls. In this one red light-community surrounded by fields and barns and cattle, the couple owns a feed store and Lindsay has opened a restaurant. But in all their busy lives, Lindsay is keeping gospel missions at the center.
“As soon as we realized that everything we were doing made a giant impact on all the families around us, we knew that we were impacting the community.”
Lindsay was recently elected president of Illinois Baptist Women’s WMU. IBSA Leadership Development Director Carmen Halsey spotted leadership gifts in Lindsay, as she does in many young women. “She’s got her priorities straight, she definitely loves Jesus, and she’ll use any platform she has to share the gospel,” Halsey observed.
Developing leaders who serve in their churches and who mobilize church members for missions is one of IBSA’s goals. The great variety of missions in Illinois depends on it: compassion ministry, reaching unreached people and under-served communities with the gospel, ministry to students, growing new churches, and revitalizing existing congregations. All this depends on Great Commission focus and leadership development among the wide network of Illinois Baptists.
And Lindsay Wineinger is but one joyful and energetic example.
The Mission Illinois Offering and Week of Prayer is Sept. 12-19. https://missionillinois.org/
MIO 2021 – Vital Patchwork from IL Baptist State Association on Vimeo.