OPINION|
Hey, not sure if it’s a story, but I saw the gigantic globe sculpture at Mission University is about to be lifted in the air!
-Brandon Landers, Springfield
The metal globe of six of the seven continents — Antarctica is missing — was part of the April 18 move of the central office of the Baptist Bible Fellowship International World Mission Center from Kearney Street to 4100 W. World Mission Ave.
The office moved and the globe moved with it.
The new address is on West Sunshine Street, just west of Highway 160. The site also has a training center and seven apartments for retired missionaries.
I went out there on a recent rainy day and met Jon Konnerup, mission director, a former missionary who was born in Ethiopia.
There it was. The globe. Bolted down in its new location.
The Baptist Bible Fellowship had offices at 720 E. Kearney St. — next to the Baptist Bible College — since 1987. The globe was placed in the green space facing Kearney Street in 1988.
It was manufactured by the Springfield company Montgomery Metal Craft.
The organization is a fellowship of pastors, preachers, churches, missionaries and educational institutions worldwide, affiliated for the purpose of church planting and sending missionaries worldwide.
Currently, Konnerup tells me, the fellowship has 600 missionaries in 80 countries.
Everyone had the same first question
“Everyone associated with us, the first question they asked was: ‘Are you going to move the globe?’
“People know about the globe,” Konnerup says. “I know that people are disappointed it left Kearney. Others said that if we are moving, we have to take it with us.”
A large crane was needed to move it and a well-planned route was taken, one accounting for power lines, overhead bridges and low-hanging traffic signals, he says. Pinnacle Signs oversaw the globe’s relocation.
One coincidence, Konnerup says, is that one of the workers involved in moving the globe also helped install it 36 years ago.
This is Answer Man column No. 72.
