WAKE FOREST, N.C. (BP)–Ministers today must have the kind of God-given vision for their ministries which motivates them to step out in faith and, with a prophetic voice, call their culture back to Christ, Jerry Falwell told students at Southeastern Baptist Theological Seminary.
Falwell, in his message at the Wake Forest, N.C., campus March 23, underlined the indispensability of vision in a Christian’s ministry and the need to communicate it to those he leads.
“You’ve got to be willing to go where He sends, do what He says and stay as long as He wants,” Falwell said. “We get [vision] from God, and we translate it to the people so they will run with what He’s put in our hearts.”
Falwell has become an authority on vision casting during the course of his 52 years in ministry. He started Thomas Road Baptist Church in Lynchburg, Va., with only 35 charter members in 1956 and built it into a 24,000-member mega-church. Since starting Liberty University in the 1970s, it has grown to more than 7,000 students.
Truly successful ministers, Falwell said, are not the ones who attempt to do everything themselves but, rather, those who will communicate their God-given vision to others in such a way that they will follow it and join in its efforts.
Ministers today find themselves in a very critical and unique juncture, Falwell said, as they are called to proclaim the Gospel to a culture that rejects it and to a world that is in desperate need of it.
“America must have revival soon, or only a memory of what we once were will remain,” Falwell said, encouraging students to pray diligently for their land. “You are part of the solution because as go the pulpits, so go the churches.”
Falwell said the minister has a responsibility to seek and implement vision in more than just his local church, noting that he must tend first to his family.
“Parents need a vision for their children,” he said. “It’s a great thing to build up a godly family, but you’re not going to do it by accident. My family is ahead of my church. My family is ahead of Liberty University. You shouldn’t be so busy in this busy 21st century that your family is not first in your life, under Jesus only.”
Falwell closed by encouraging students to live lives radical for the Gospel of Christ and to make use of their time in seminary to resolve and prepare themselves to that end.
“You’ve got to decide who you are,” he said. “Between now and the time the Lord calls you home, be a dreamer. Be a revolutionary.”
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(BP) photo posted in the BP Photo Library at http://www.bpnews.net. Photo title: JERRY FALWELL.
