SBC president – Bobby Welch preaches in Carthage, N.C. on March 13 in one of 68 scheduled meetings in the run-up to the SBC’s annual convention in Greensboro.The push for Southern Baptist churches to baptize 1 million people in a year will reach the halfway point at the end of March.
“I’m extraordinarily encouraged by what I’m hearing from all across the country,” Bobby Welch told Baptist Press, “because I’ve never heard so much positive talk about witnessing, winning and baptizing as I’m hearing now.”
Welch, with his election as president of the Southern Baptist Convention in 2004, initiated the “‘Everyone Can’ Kingdom Challenge!” to call Southern Baptist churches to “Witness, Win, and Baptize … One Million” during the 2005-06 church year.
“There’s no way to even remotely quantify how things are going numerically,” Welch said. “However, several churches have told me that they have baptized more than 100 people in a single baptismal service. Just about every day, I’m hearing from small churches that they are breaking records in baptisms. Sometimes it’s only three baptisms and sometimes it’s only eight. But that’s more than they’ve ever done before, and that’s a great thing.
“What we’re hearing from our Baptist associations across the country is overwhelmingly positive,” Welch continued. “We’ve got associations in the mix like we’ve never had before. That’s a very healthy, fresh touch to me.
“At almost every meeting I’m attending, there are associational missionaries who stand up and share what they’re doing in this Everyone Can campaign. One associational missionary announced that he’s organized five baptismal rallies in one day. Another told me that three other associations are banding together for baptismal rallies. To me, that is huge, because that is an actual manifestation of one of our Everyone Can goals: unity of purpose for evangelism.
“Some people ask me if I’ll be disappointed if we fail,” Welch continued, “and I say, ‘There’s no way we can fail.’ Ask just one person who came to Christ as a result of Everyone Can, who had their guilty, stained heart cleansed from sin, who enjoys a personal relationship with Jesus Christ and who has access to our Creator God. Ask that person if Everyone Can failed, and that person will vehemently disagree. In fact, they’ll tell you it was a smashing success.”
Several avenues of involvement remain a vital part of making the next six months as productive as possible for winning and baptizing the lost:
– Pastors can schedule baptisms as part of their Easter Sunday services, April 16, one of the three special days that Welch has asked churches to help build the Everyone Can momentum. In addition to Easter Sunday and Nov. 27 of last year, Welch has asked that churches highlight baptism on Sept. 30, the final day of the SBC’s church year and the closing date of the Everyone Can initiative.
– Churches can register their baptism totals at the Everyone Can website, www.everyonecan.net, to provide “a ballpark figure of what kind of progress we’re making,” said Jay Johnston, director of FAITH/evangelism and discipleship at LifeWay Christian Resources. “We want to rejoice at what God has done.”
– Baptist associations can still schedule baptism rallies. Last fall, Welch asked the associations to call their churches together for two such rallies by Sept. 30, 2006.
Suggestions for planning associational rallies are available at www.everyonecan.net by clicking on the “I’m It” logo.
In a brief downloadable message titled “You’re It” at the Everyone Can website, Welch says to pastors, “You’re it and I’m it. I want to ask you, ‘Can we count on you to take leadership in that association?’ Go to your associational director of missions – go to fellow pastors – and say, ‘We need to do this, we can do this, we ought to do this, we need to be a part of this unified purpose.'”