[1]One of the real joys of serving as a former local church pastor and in this role until the end of October is the common unity we as Southern Baptists have together around Christ in sending more missionaries and planting more churches.
As my time at the Executive Committee comes to a close, I want us to remember that the Great Commission of Jesus Christ our Lord is a commission to His church. We are the church. We are called to present the Gospel of Jesus Christ to every person in the world and to make disciples of all the nations.
The local churches across America that cooperate with the Southern Baptist Convention do so in order to send more missionaries and plant more gospel churches.
Missionaries are called from the churches and then sent by the churches to be missionaries. Through our cooperation together as SBC churches, the International Mission Board joins in this common purpose of making disciples and multiplying churches. The IMB [2] serves Southern Baptists in carrying out the Great Commission and making disciples of all the nations.
The great Revelation 7:9 [3] vision believes knowing and worshipping Jesus Christ as Lord will one day occur by people from every nation, tribe, people, and language.
Two Actions Needed Now
1. We need churches to adopt one of the 3,105 unengaged, unreached people groups, committing to pray for them daily.
2. We need churches to call out missionaries from within their pews to take the gospel to the nations.
Churches are the key to planting gospel churches and to calling out and equipping church planters in America and throughout the world. The New Testament model is churches plant churches. Send Network [4] of the North American Mission Board [5] helps your church have Kingdom impact. Reaching more people through church multiplication is biblical.
All across the SBC, churches are getting involved in church planting. Churches are partnering with their state conventions to sponsor their first plant. Churches are beginning training residencies and internships. But, we need more churches and we need more church planters. We also need more churches to become sending churches.
In North America alone, we want to plant at least 600 churches each year.
This is possible, but two actions are necessary.
Two Actions Needed to Inspire Church Planting
(1) We need to pray for God to raise up no less that 600 new churches annually.
(2) We need more churches to invest in planting churches.
Churches are the key to sending missionaries and planting churches. Thank you to all of our pastors leading their churches in this Gospel endeavor.
May we rise up together and do all we can to send more missionaries and plant more gospel churches.