Who We Are
As other Christians were stirred to see the spiritual needs of children and young people, the work expanded, spreading to other cities and states. In order to facilitate Bible teaching, a complete visualized Bible study course for children and young teens was written. The course was called Footsteps of Faith. This and other BCM publications have been written and produced in many languages and are used today around the world by churches and other mission organizations.
Over the years God has greatly expanded BCM’s worldwide ministries and we now have approximately more than 850 full-time missionaries serving in 50 different countries. Since we have diversified – community, compassion and church ministries – we are now known as Bible Centered Ministries.
Getting to know BCM’s Founder: Bessie Traber
By Donna Culver in BCM World, 2011
Growing up in a Christian home in New York State, Bessie Traber responded early to Jesus’ love. She had a great sense of humor an loved people. She also loved learning, receiving an excellent academic education at Vassar College, the University of Pennsylvania, and Biblical Seminary. But she struggled with illness. During these times God began to speak to her through His Word, revealing that He had a plan for her life, and that she could trust Him to work it out. As she yielded heart and life to God’s control, she began to feel the call of the world’s unreached millions. Accepting a missionary call to the Philippines Bessie began a ministry to children there.
But after one term of missionary service, Bessie Traber had again become quite ill and was unable to return to the Philippines. I was a missionary candidate in an early Bible Club Movement candidate class where Bessie described her struggle in prayer as she pleaded for healing so that she could go back. God’s presence was so real, it seemed as though the Lord Jesus came and sat in a chair beside her ed.
“My child, you are not to return to the Philippines,” God told her clearly.
Bessie cried out, “But Lord! You know I have no use for someone who goes to the field for one term and does not go back!”
He answered, “I know, My child, but you are not to go back.”
At the time, it was a great disappointment for Bessie. She had no way of seeing that God saw: the opening of a much wider door that would mean untold blessing to many and an opportunity to witness God’s power revealed through His faithfulness to His Word. But once more she yielded to God’s control, choosing to trust and obey. Bessie later wrote: “As I committed to the Lord what He would have me to do, since the doors of the Philippines were closed to me, He encouraged me to just wait before Him and trust Him absolutely to give me something to do whereby souls would be brought to know and love our Savior.”
When young people at a Labor Day Bible conference near Philadelphia asked Bessie Traber to start Bible clubs in Philadelphia, she had no idea how wide a door had opened. By end of the first year, 145 Bible Clubs had been registered, summer camps increased from two to 12, and 28 Bible Club missionaries were actively serving the Lord. By the time Miss Traber retired, more than 100 missionaries and thousands of volunteers were teaching children in 16 countries.