RICHMOND, Va. (BP)–Blackshear Place Baptist Church of Flowery Branch, Ga., is the 1,000th congregation to join the International Mission Board’s Global Priority Network — a growing community of churches that give priority to taking the gospel to the ends of the earth.
GPNet was started four years ago to build a network of Southern Baptist churches that wish to take Acts 1:8 seriously by prioritizing and personalizing missions, said GPNet director Bill Morgan. Churches of all sizes commit to eight action plans that lead them into deeper involvement and commitment to reaching all the peoples of the earth.
Through special conferences, e-mails, phone calls and regular bulletins, GPNet churches learn about what God’s doing in the world and find ways to strengthen their international missions involvement.
“We want to be on the cutting edge and make our missions trips more effective,” said James Mills, who is serving as Blackshear Place’s interim church administrator while the congregation searches for a pastor. “Southern Baptists have one of the best plans in the world. If we will cooperate, we can be the change agents.”
Through partnerships with missionaries in Central and Eastern Europe, Blackshear Place members have seen God change lives as they have come face to face with people longing to hear the good news of God’s love for the first time.
“Jesus told us we should go and, once we went, we got hooked on his power and Holy Spirit,” said Teri Pope, missions committee chair.
Serving in global missions has changed the way the church looks at its own community as well, Mills said.
“It’s easy to become a glorified country club while people are drowning,” he said. “We are to go across the ocean; we also have to cross lawns.”
While many churches have real hearts for missions, GPNet churches give the International Mission Board the opportunity to affirm and personalize service to them.
“We welcome the opportunity of building this kind of relationship with thousands more,” Morgan said.
He noted that many pastors and missions leaders say a sense of revival has come to their churches through renewed commitment and obedience to serious fulfillment of the Great Commission and hands-on involvement.
“Several have said that the action plans of the GPNet were exactly what they had been looking for to lead their churches to deeper involvement in and support of missions,” Morgan said.
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For more information on how a church can be a part of the GPNet, visit the IMB website at www.imb.org/core/MissionsPartner/gpn.htm. An information packet is available by e-mailing [email protected] or by calling toll-free 1-877-462-4721.
