• Contact
  • Return to IBSA
  • Advertise Through Us
  • Subscribe
  • E-Reader

IBSA News

Illinois Baptist State Newspaper

  • Quick Links
    • E-Reader
    • Subscribe
    • Advertise
    • Resource
  • News
    • IBSA
    • SBC
    • Culture
    • Illinois Churches
  • Stories
    • Thriving
    • Church Planting
    • Mission
    • Next Step
  • In Focus
  • Columns
    • Nate Adams
    • Eric Reed
    • Meredith Flynn
    • Table Talk
    • Reporter’s Notebook
    • Encouraging Words

Sallateeska baptism demonstrates SBC connections

November 30, 2022 By Baptist Press

(Ed. Note—In our July issue, we reported that Illinois’s very own Sandy Wisdom-Martin told the story of her brother’s recent baptism during her WMU presentation at the Southern Baptist Convention meeting in Anaheim. We thought we you would appreciate this longer account that shows God’s fingerprints through multiple SBC connections. It’s too good to miss.)

When Sandy Wisdom-Martin watched her brother, Doug, get baptized last year, it represented a story of God’s faithfulness and Southern Baptist cooperation.

After her mother shared the good news, Wisdom-Martin rearranged her travel schedule to be there. The Woman’s Missionary Union (WMU) national executive director-treasurer was traveling through the Midwest enroute to another obligation at the time.

The baptism took place at Lake Sallateeska Baptist Camp near her family’s childhood home in rural southern Illinois.

Her family attended a small Southern Baptist church when Sandy was growing up, and it was there her brother Doug had walked the aisle as a child. By his own admission, Doug never made a true profession of faith.

Sandy and Doug Martin as children

This was until Doug and his wife began attending a campus of Lighthouse Community Church in Nashville, Illinois during the Covid pandemic. It was there he would profess faith in Christ and seek baptism.

Wisdom-Martin said it was an “overwhelming” experience seeing her brother’s baptism take place at the very same lake where she attended camp and surrendered to a call to ministry.

“It’s such a special place in my life as it’s where I heard God’s call on my life and I responded,” Wisdom-Martin said.

“Just the place itself is special, but nothing could have prepared me for my mother calling to say my brother was getting baptized. It was so incredible. It was a story six decades in the making.

“The story of my brother doesn’t happen in isolation; it happens because of the community of Southern Baptists. I’ve always been a strong advocate of what we do as Southern Baptists, but that day it was even more personal because it was my brother. I was amazed at the connections, but also the time span of everything that had to happen for decades for that moment in time to happen.”

Doug’s salvation is laced with Southern Baptist connections, which begin with Danny Donato, former pastor of Lighthouse Community Church.

Donato was attending a small college in Lexington, Ky., in the late 1990s, but it closed and he transferred to Boyce College in Louisville. While there he started attending Highview Baptist Church. At that time, the youth pastor was Jimmy Scroggins and the senior pastor was Kevin Ezell.

Scroggins currently serves as lead pastor of Family Church, a network of neighborhood churches in South Florida. And Ezell, who also pastored First Baptist Church of Marion, is now head of the North American Mission Board (NAMB)

While at Highview Church, Donato interned with Scroggins. This gave Donato the opportunity to grow not only under Scroggins, but under Ezell as well. “He was the first younger pastor that I got to sit under. I got to see Highview launch their second campus, and to see what went into that before church planting was really a ‘cool’ thing to do.”

It was there “I really learned how to be bold and courageous in leadership,” Donato said. “It’s been a unique experience to be that close to guys who have been so impactful for the Kingdom and been such visionary leaders.”

Years later, as the pastor of Lighthouse Community Church, Donato would continue this philosophy of church planting. Lighthouse receives some financial support from NAMB, and a few years ago the congregation started its second campus in Okawville, Ill.

This is where Doug Wisdom and his wife, Becky, met Donato. They were invited to visit the church by folks who were already attending.

When the couple went through the new members’ class, Donato said he talked with them about the gospel and what it meant to be saved. “You could tell God was gripping Doug’s heart, and it was very evident that God was doing something,” Donato said.

Pastor Danny Donato baptizing Doug Martin

It wasn’t until Doug’s baptism sometime later at Lake Sallateeska that Donato would make the connection about Doug’s relation to Sandy of the WMU.

“It’s the beautiful mosaic of the Kingdom,” Donato said. “God is constantly working and doing things that will bring Him glory.”

Wisdom-Martin said it is amazing that her support of NAMB was actually going to the church where her brother would come to faith and be baptized.

“For as long as I can remember I have supported the Annie Armstrong Easter Offering,” Wisdom-Martin said. “Everything that I’ve given over the last 50 years has been worth it and I would give it all over again, because it helped lead to my brother’s faith. I want that for all of us and our friends and family members. I think that’s the power of what we do together.”

–Timothy Cockes for Baptist Press

Share This Story

  • Facebook
  • Twitter

Featured Columns

After another leadership failure, forgive? Yes. Forget? Maybe later.

Eric Reed

My cousin Holly’s house burned down in July. The family and their dog were saved, but they lost everything. Literally everything, except her grandmother’s ancient roasting pan just big enough for a 12-pound turkey and a diamond ring. Everything else in their rural home was gone in under an hour. The irony was that my […]

Nate Adams

Positive purpose

Nate Adams

Without question, more of my time and passion is invested in encouraging churches to give to missions through the Cooperative Program than through any designated offering, including our own state missions offering. I believe that’s as it should be. Yet both the CP and designated offerings have vital, important purposes. My conviction is that the […]

What personal missions commitment looks like

Meredith Flynn

“Your partnership is needed now.” That sentence jumped out as I looked over this year’s Mission Illinois Offering materials. This time of year always reminds me of the things that unite Illinois Baptists: the shared prayer that more people will come to know Jesus; the shared burden for our communities in need of transformation; and […]

More Columns

Newsmakers Interview with Bart Barber, Part 3

Eric Reed

Southern Baptist Convention President Bart Barber is featured in the September issue of the Illinois Baptist. An hour-long interview focused on key issues including women in pastoral ministry and “friendly cooperation.” Editor Eric Reed asked Barber to look ahead to the 2024 SBC in Indianapolis. They discussed the role of social media in our Baptist […]

News

SBC EC votes at September 2023 meeting

Recap of this week’s SBC Exec Comm meeting

The Baptist Paper

While the anticipated next step regarding who will temporarily lead the Southern Baptist Convention Executive Committee in the interim period changed mid-way through the trustees’ meeting this week, trustee chair Philip Robertson plans to begin a new search right away. Recently retired Kentucky pastor Dan Summerlin provided this statement yesterday afternoon (Sept. 19) after alerting […]

Barber recalls ‘bold’ Southern Baptists, urges cooperation amid trials

Quick look at SBC Exec Comm agenda, Sept. 18-19

More News Stories

Mission

Metro East church plant hosts multiplication meeting

Metro East church plant hosts multiplication meeting

Ben Jones

Pastors and church leaders from around the Metro East area gathered in Collinsville May 17 for the second Multiply Illinois Hub. These quarterly regional events are designed to encourage and equip those interested in church multiplication. Heights Community Church, planted in 2016, hosted the gathering in their newly renovated home. With the St. Louis skyline […]

A first-time ministry to migrant workers is very fruitful

FIRST-PERSON: A once-feared tribe now spreads the Gospel

More Mission Stories

  • News
  • Mission
  • In Focus
  • Columns

Copyright © 2023 · Website by Megaphone Designs