“When I was in high school and the summer after, I was invited to serve in middle school ministry. And that’s where my love for middle school and high school girls began. Really, that’s where my love for ministry began.”
Sidney Vines has a heart for ministry, particularly to young girls, which is the perfect calling for a youth pastor’s wife who serves alongside him. Since September of 2021, she has served as relationship manager for BMA Missions. A lifetime BMA church member, she grew up at Mount Olive Baptist Church in Guy, attended college at the University of Arkansas at Little Rock, then met Chris Vines at a Passion conference in her sophomore year.
A year later, they married and moved to Fort Worth while Chris attended Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary and she served in student ministry at a church they attended. During their time at Southwestern, she was the event coordinator for the Department of Institutional Advancement, a job she loved.
In 2014, Clif Johnson asked Chris to join the staff at Garrett Memorial in Hope as student pastor, so they moved to south Arkansas with their 10-month-old son, Carson. Two years later, Elliot was born. Hope has been their home for eight years, and they feel blessed to serve alongside and be discipled by Clif and his wife Kristi.
As her boys got older, Sidney began doing wedding planning. In college, she had completed a year-long internship plus certification in the business, then worked for a wedding florist in Fort Worth. It was great training for later when church members and friends began asking her for help with weddings. Four years ago, she went full-time in the wedding planning and floral design business.
Chris and Sidney have also been on mission trips, served on VSM teams and led their church on trips in the States and abroad. Sidney says, “I’ve always seen wedding planning as a ministry and thought of it as an avenue to do backdoor discipleship. I feel blessed that God has given me those experiences in planning and mission trips and now merged the two as I serve BMA Missions.”
Sidney says, “My job is our people, our pastors and our church members. I want to be the liaison between them and “the office” and talk about what’s going on, answer their questions and help connect them with our missionaries.”
Since starting at BMA Missions, she has called pastors to introduce herself, let them know what she’s doing, why she’s calling and how they can connect with the Missions team and with missionaries. She said, “I want to let our people know how they can serve or give, become more integrated and involved and just get the Missions message out there.”
If you have questions, concerns or want more information about Missions, please contact Sidney at (870) 826-7757 or sidney@bmaam.com.
