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No Other Name Brings Missions To Music
10/13/2010
LEXINGTON — When Laura Allen, her brother, Sam Allen, and their friend, Chad Smith, began performing and touring as the vocal group, No Other Name, Laura Allen said the experience was fulfilling — but something was missing.
The vocal group, No Other Name, (from left: Laura Allen, Chad Smith and Sam Allen) will perform a free concert at 6 p.m. on Nov. 14 at Immanuel Baptist Church in Lexington. The trio also will lead messengers and guests in worship at the 173rd Annual Meeting of the Kentucky Baptist Convention Nov. 16, also at Immanuel Baptist.
"We would just go and do a concert and it was entertaining," she said. "We would try to minister too. We always select songs that we think are ministering songs and theologically sound songs."
But it was a missions-focused song, and subsequent project for the Southern Baptist International Mission Board, that encouraged the group to create a real missions focus on stage, video and cyberspace, Allen said.
Consequently, audiences at No Other Name concerts today find passport applications next to the CDs for sale.
“More than ministering to them, we're challenging them,” Allen explained about the group's new relationship with their audience.
Kentucky Baptists can experience that missions message Nov. 14 at Immanuel Baptist Church in Lexington. Billy Compton, executive associate for Cooperative Program and Resources at the Kentucky Baptist Convention, is encouraging churches across the state to move their Sunday night worship services to Immanuel for the Great Commission Celebration, which is free of charge and begins at 6 p.m., Eastern Time.
No Other Name also will lead messengers and guests in worship at the 173rd Annual Meeting of the Kentucky Baptist Convention Nov. 16 at Immanuel Baptist.
In addition to incorporating missions into their songs and concerts, No Other Name organizes mission trips and shares those experiences on stage and through their website and Facebook page.
“There was nothing really wrong with what we were doing before, and it was helpful to people," Allen said. "But now it seems like we're not only encouraging them and ministering to them but we're giving them maybe a goal, even if it's just to get their passport or to go to the IMB website and figure out what's going on and how they can pray."
The group’s name is derived from Acts 4:12: “Salvation is found in no one else, for there is no other name under heaven given to men by which we must be saved.”
Allen said each member of the group had a love for missions but that love was was energized when the Southern Baptist International Mission Board heard their song “Lead You to the Cross.”
Last year the trio flew to Dubai to film a music video for the song with the IMB. Included in the final cut were photos of the late Dr. Martha Myers, a Southern Baptist missionary. Myers and two colleagues were murdered at the former Baptist Hospital in Jibla, Yemen, in 2002.
IMB used the video to promote the Lottie Moon Christmas Offering for International Missions last year. The video naturally led to a missions emphasis at their concerts which, Allen said, gave them a purpose.
A remark made by Gordon Fort, an IMB vice president, led the group to supply passport applications at their concerts, Allen said.
“We heard him say it in a church service one time where we were singing, that everybody should have their passport because if you want to tell God that you're willing to go, that's one thing you can do,” she said.
Recently a fan posted a message on No Other Name’s Facebook page, relaying how she had gotten a passport after attending a concert, not knowing that later God would open the doors for her and her husband to adopt a son from Zimbabwe.
“She said, 'I got my passport because I got an application at one of your concerts, having no idea that I was even going to be adopting a boy and furthermore that it would happen so quickly that I wouldn't have time to wait for my passport.'”
Also at their concerts, No Other Name began recruiting people to go on a mission trip to Nicaragua last June, and another is planned for next year to Brazil. Allen said about 100 people, including a group of college students, ventured into the countryside of Nicaragua to distribute a discipleship book in the local language.
“You would have thought we were passing out $100 bills. They were so thrilled to receive something in their language that talks about what it is to be a Christian,” she said. “Even though they know who Jesus is and they might have been raised in church or have gone to church, they don't really know what it is to be a Christian. So we would walk down a street and pass out the books and we would walk back up the same street 30 minutes later and see people reading that book with their children gathered around them.”
Two team members from Mississippi stand out in her mind from the trip, Allen said.
“There were two girls who had just graduated high school, and less than a month later they were on the trip with us to Nicaragua. They had made bracelets that they wove themselves with threads and sold them for $3 apiece to pay for the trip,” she said. “They would stay up all night and make these bracelets and sell them at school and church to pay for their way to go.
“Those girls had such an experience,” Allen continued. “For both of them, that was their first time doing anything like that. Their eyes were opened, and I'm excited to see what God's going to do with them for the rest of their lives just because they had that experience so young, fresh out of high school. They heard us sing at their church and signed up to go.”
Compton said he hopes Kentucky Baptists will be inspired by the Great Commission Celebration Nov. 14.
“I urge you to mark your calendar for this Great Commission Celebration and to promote this event in your church as well,” he said. “You will be inspired as we worship together and prepare for a great Kentucky Baptist Convention gathering.”
For details on the 173rd Annual Meeting of the Kentucky Baptist Convention, visit www.kybaptist.org/annualmeeting .
The Kentucky Baptist Convention is a cooperative missions and ministry organization made up of nearly 2.400 autonomous Baptist churches in Kentucky. A variety of state and worldwide ministries are coordinated through its administrative offices in Louisville, including: missions work, disaster relief, ministry training and support, church development, evangelism and more. For more, find us on Facebook or follow us on Twitter.
by Erin Roach, KBC Communications
