PHOENIX — Hundreds of
pastors, church leaders, laymen — young and old — made their way down the
aisles. Some carried small children. One limped forward with a cane.
On the final evening of the Southern Baptist Convention’s (SBC) annual
meeting, they filed to the front of the Phoenix Convention
Center hall, following the International
Mission Board’s (IMB) presentation June 15.
They shared a public commitment for their churches to “embrace” one of the
approximately 3,800 people groups currently not engaged by anyone with an
intentional church-planting strategy and where less than 2 percent are
evangelical Christians. The crowd gathered in front of the stage shortly after
IMB President Tom Elliff extended the invitation for Southern Baptists to
signify their willingness to embrace these unengaged, unreached people groups.
“To the best of our knowledge … nobody has them on the radar screen,” Elliff
said.
“It’s like having people standing out in the cold around your house while you’re
enjoying a wonderful warm meal. You know they’re out there but you have no plan
to go out there and offer them anything.
“Well, I believe Southern Baptists do.”
To reach them, Elliff added, “It’s going to take nothing short of being willing
to lay down your life.”
BP photo Delivering his first report to messengers as president of the International Mission Board (IMB), Tom Elliff told the 4,800 messengers God is moving through IMB missionaries, but that it will take a movement of Southern Baptist churches to reach the world’s 3,800 unreached, unengaged people groups. Go here to view a photo gallery of N.C. Baptists at the annual meeting. |
Forty new IMB missionaries who were commissioned earlier that evening were
standing at the front to receive commitment cards from those who responded.
“We need to be bearers of the light, whatever the cost,” Elliff said. “Do we
just want to be Southern Baptists, or do we want to be New Testament people (like
Peter and John) who cannot stop speaking?”
Elliff continued, “(These) people groups … as best we can tell, we have
absolutely no one saying, ‘I want to reach them. We’re going to ask God for a
strategy, we’re going to figure out a way to get boots on the ground.’”
IMB is using the word “embrace” to identify this effort.
“It’s not a matter of yanking names off (a map) and saying we’ll sign up,”
Elliff said. “No, no … we want this to be a lifetime marriage between the two
of us.
“We don’t just want you on our parking lot or in our store. We want you in the
cash register, behind the counter and in the warehouse. Everything we have is
yours because it’s always been yours.”
The evening program was the culmination of a series of challenges issued by
pastors and convention leaders throughout the convention and the Pastors’
Conference that preceded it.
Earlier in the day, messengers heard that “anything can be accomplished if God’s
people join together” from David Platt, pastor of The Church at Brook Hills in Birmingham, Ala.
“What drives passion for unreached peoples is not guilt. It’s glory,” Platt
said.
“Glory for a King, for a King who deserves the praise of every people group on
the planet.”
‘Don’t drop the cross’
The challenge also was extended through the presentation of a wooden cross
during the IMB’s report to the SBC. Handcrafted
by a missionary who was killed in 2002, the cross — bearing the words “Don’t drop
the cross” and the verse Rev. 7:9 — served as a visual reminder of the cost for
Southern Baptists to take the gospel to the far corners of the earth.
SBC President Bryant Wright, pastor of Johnson Ferry Baptist Church in Marietta, Ga., presented
the cross to Southern Baptists during the program.
The cross was made by William Koehn, who lost his life Dec. 30, 2002, when a gunman shot and killed
him and two others — Kathleen Gariety and Martha Myers — at Jibla Baptist Hospital in Yemen where they
served.
Nearly a decade after their deaths, a Christian worker in the Middle East gave the
cross to Wright about two weeks earlier in Cairo, Egypt. They stood
in a cemetery near the grave of Oswald Chambers, who wrote the devotional My
Utmost for His Highest.
“We’re reminded of the cost that it is to reach the hardest places still on
earth,” the worker told Bryant.
“I want to give this cross to you as a challenge to you and Southern Baptists
to not drop the cross,” the worker said. “Remember the peoples that are yet
unreached and unengaged.”
The worker broke into tears as he shared what his three fallen colleagues meant
to him and so many others.
“They gave it all and that challenges me,” the worker said. “They didn’t stop
until He was done, and then He took them home and that’s what I want to be — my
utmost for His highest.
“It’s worth it all,” he said.
“It’s worth it all.”
“If you make a commitment today,” Wright told the crowd, “it may cost you your
life, not just a lifetime of service, not just temporary service, but it may
cost any of us our life.”
Giving up a comfortable life here in the States hasn’t been easy for Christy
and Ryan Campbell and their five children, who will be serving in sub-Saharan Africa. Members of Faith Baptist Church in Youngsville, N.C., the couple
were among the 40 newly commissioned missionaries.
“Though I had surrendered to missions as a fourth-grade girl, I found my role
as a mom and wife living the American dream quite comfortable,” Christy
Campbell told the crowd.
“Hesitantly I agreed to pray, and God clearly revealed to me that the time had
come to go.”
The couple will be joining nearly 5,000 missionaries on the field. In Elliff’s
report, he shared that IMB workers reported 360,876 baptisms in their work with
Baptists overseas, 29,237 churches planted, 920 people groups currently engaged
and 114 new people groups engaged. Southern Baptists gave $7,985,000 that went
toward hunger and relief, and $145,662,925 to the 2010 Lottie Moon Christmas
Offering.
“Although it did not reach our goal, it still is the fourth-highest Lottie Moon
offering in the history of that offering,” Elliff said. “That, with the economy
and everything that went on in this world and in our country (this past year),
we’re so grateful….
“Now, you know that I’m going to ask us all to step up to the plate,” he added.
“We can do better than that. The truth about giving is … that we cast ourselves
totally on the providence of God. That’s what turns giving into a faith
exercise.”
As Wright told the crowd earlier in the program, “let us not drop the cross.
The challenge has now been passed.”
To see the “Don’t drop the cross” video, go to
imb.org/main/downloads/flashvideos.asp?filename=/files/127/12794/12794-72509.flv.
To learn more about how a church can embrace an unengaged, unreached people
group, go to
imb.org/main/lead/embracedefault.asp?StoryID=9651&LanguageID=1709.
For more information about this year’s Lottie Moon Christmas Offering theme, go
(EDITOR’S NOTE — James is a senior writer for the International Mission Board.)