‘Everything about him was sacrifice’: Missionary from New Palestine leaves legacy in Mexico churches

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Well into his 70s, he remained the bundle of action friends say he had been for decades.

The Rev. Jerrel “Jerry” Shaw taught upper-level classes at a Bible school in Mexico. He cooked for the students in the boys dorm. He oversaw the building of the next church. And the next. The varied tasks frequently meant 15- or 16-hour days.

From the day in 1976 that Shaw loaded his family onto a bread truck converted into living quarters and drove to Mexico, he was not one to back down from a challenge. Even if he had to quickly learn Spanish. Even if people threw rocks at him. Even if guerrillas or the drug cartels didn’t want him there.

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That tenacity remained more than 40 years later, as he prayed that a truck carrying tools would make it up the mountain to a church building site before the rainy season came and mired it halfway up for months.

The truck made it. The church was built. It was the twenty-third one he helped build in Mexico, and it would be his last.

Shaw 78, died March 3 in Guadalajara, Jalisco, Mexico, after 43 years with World Wide New Testament Baptist Mission.

“We are so proud of him as a missions agency and what he did for the cause of Christ,” said John O’Malley, general director of the agency based in Kings Mountain, North Carolina. O’Malley is scheduled to speak at Shaw’s funeral today at Bethel Baptist Church in Greenfield, Shaw’s home congregation and sending church.

“Everything about him was sacrifice to get the gospel to this place,” O’Malley said. “We will remember most of all … (that) that man is in heaven, and not because of what he did, but because of who his savior was.”

The transformation from teenager doing stage construction for the junior class play at New Palestine High School into pastor building churches and training leaders was an eventful, and often challenging, one.

But those who love Shaw look back on it fondly.

Shaw graduated from New Palestine High School in 1958. There were 34 members in his graduating class.

“We were pretty tight — no cliques,” said classmate Bob Robertson. “Everybody was friends.”

Two years later Shaw married Frances Johannes of Greenfield at St. Michael Catholic Church in Greenfield. He ran a barber shop in New Palestine and served as president of the New Palestine High School Alumni Association in 1965.

Later, he moved his business to Rushville, operating a barber shop and the beauty shop next door.

One day in August 1969, Frances Shaw went to a revival service at Grace Baptist Church in Mohawk and responded to an invitation to make a personal commitment to follow Jesus. Daughter Kim, 9, followed the next day. Jerrel and their younger daughter, Kathy, did so in February 1971.

The family attended Rushville Baptist Temple, where Frances was mission secretary. She found the update letters that came in from missionaries interesting, often discussing them with her husband.

A letter from Mexico was particularly intriguing — so much so that Jerrel decided to visit Mexico and see the work himself.

Still, Shaw hadn’t set out to be a missionary. Kim Branscum of Greenfield recalls how her father would later tell people his prayers slowly changed from saying he’d do anything for God except be a missionary, to telling God he was willing to be a missionary — but not in Mexico.

Finally, she said, one evening after he swept hair clippings off the floor of the barber shop, he told God he’d go. To Mexico.

Shaw went to Indiana Baptist College, studied Spanish, and drove from state to state, visiting churches and seeking their support for the mission work. Branscum remembers traveling some of those miles with him. One day, a baggie with quarters, nickels and dimes from a class of Sunday School children was just enough for gasoline and a meal.

When the family finally drove into Mexico in 1976, into a dry landscape with cactus and at the time roaming animals, “It was like a totally different world,” Branscum recalled.

The bathroom was 100 yards out the door. The local wildlife included poisonous lizards, recalls daughter Kathy Teffertiller of McCordsville. And the missionary the Shaws were expecting to help them settle in left right after they arrived.

“We didn’t know the language; we didn’t know anything,” Branscum said. “But Dad, that didn’t stop him.”

Shaw set about the work for which he had come. He built a rapport with local youth by playing basketball with them and got to know the neighbors.

“He was one of those few people that when they needed something, they knew that they could go to him,” Teffertiller said.

In 1979, Frances died. About a year later, Shaw married Delia Gonzalez. Their son, Jerry Jr., is also a missionary with World Wide New Testament Baptist Missions.

Over the years, Shaw built church buildings and trained pastors. He started a Bible college that has produced more than 400 graduates; more than 100 of them are pastors. He planted churches — “I’m talking about (going from) zero people to thriving congregations,” O’Malley said.

Shaw wrote Bible college textbooks. He also wrote several gospel pamphlets, O’Malley said, some referencing Shaw’s passion for restoring old cars and using that as a metaphor for God restoring a person’s life.

Shaw was straightforward — “without varnish,” O’Malley said, and perhaps not someone who fit the world’s metric of success. Yet “when you come to spiritual success, Jerry owned that moment.”

Shaw took an interest in the Huichol (WEE-chull), a group of Mexican Indians. Over the years, Branscum said, he had seen them in markets, mothers selling wares with their babies strapped to them. He wanted to reach out to them.

His twenty-third church building was one for the Huichol, dedicated Dec. 23. Christmas gifts to the Shaws from donors made it possible for Jerry and Delia to arrive at the dedication bearing several hundred oranges and hundreds of pounds of pinto beans, rice, chilies, garlic, salt and also items donated by Jerry Jr.’s church.

Shaw had diabetes and some heart problems, and in letters to supporters he admitted in recent years that he kept thinking this or that church building would be his last.

Still, as he reflected on his journey he was humble and grateful. Last fall, he wrote to supporters, “I have often wondered how or why the Lord took a man out of a town, New Palestine, Indiana, population of 504 (at that time), who graduated in the upper third of the lowest five in his high school class, and how He could make anything out of such a person as I.”

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Donors to the Rev. Jerrel Shaw’s ministry in Mexico were largely supporting a Bible college. His mission agency, World Wide New Testament Baptist Missions, hopes to continue garnering support for the school following his death. Those interested in giving can write to WWNTBM, P.O. Box 725, Kings Mountain, NC 28086 or visit https://wwntbm.com/give/ online and scroll to "Jerrel K., Sr. and Delia Shaw."

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