It is most encouraging to keep hearing reports about so many mission trips our church members are taking these hot summer days. They are going to various places around the nation and all over the world. I cannot help but praise the Lord for South Carolina Baptists who give themselves sacrificially in service to hurting people and critical mission projects.
Carlisle DriggersWe are all so inundated day after day with horrible news accounts of terrorist attacks, wars, innocent families being destroyed, starvation, disease, and rampant evil across the globe. We ask ourselves, “What can I do to help?” The truth of the matter is, we can do so very much, because the hope for the peoples of the earth is to discover that Jesus Christ is the absolute and final answer to the ills of mankind. Only in Him can lasting peace be found.
As we live out the teachings of Jesus while telling our own story of personal transformation, we bring to the world a message of healing for troubled hearts and souls. That is the real reason for our emphasis this year on every one of our churches reaching and baptizing new believers. What a testimony that will be if we can announce by Dec. 31, 2006, that 100 percent of the churches of the South Carolina Baptist Convention stirred the baptismal waters in the same year! That is why Empowering Kingdom Growth is so very important as the spiritual focus for all of our work and ministries together.
The annual meeting of the Southern Baptist Convention this past month in Greensboro, N.C., was one for the record books. It was so inspiring to see a large number of teenagers, college students, and young married couples in attendance. They were everywhere! We have not seen that in years. How very hopeful for our future.
The election of one of our own as president, Dr. Frank Page, pastor of First Baptist Church, Taylors, was as unexpected as could be. He is the first South Carolinian to be elected Southern Baptist Convention president since the early 1930s. Without question, his election was a grassroots effort and clearly indicates that Southern Baptists are dead serious about the Great Commission of Jesus to take the gospel to the nations. Dr. Page’s election helped to give new and much-needed attention to the value of the Cooperative Program as the primary vehicle that supports all our mission efforts at home and overseas, plus our evangelistic endeavors, our institutions, our starting of churches, our student scholarships, our disaster relief work, and on and on.
If we are going to be a strong voice for lasting peace and spiritual rejuvenation, the Cooperative Program is more urgently necessary than ever. We must be led by those persons, like Frank Page, who come from churches that are Cooperative Program champions. The Greensboro convention sent the message loud and specific: “Let’s do what we are supposed to do if we are loyal and committed to our work together.” To be elected to a leadership position in any capacity of Southern Baptist life without supporting the Cooperative Program generously and faithfully is akin to being married and wanting all the benefits of the marriage without contributing to the stability and vitality of the marriage! It just does not work that way!
I heard someone in Greensboro remark that “all local church pastors need to lead from the front and pray from behind for our mission going and giving to be effective.”
On another note, all of us are aware that a search committee from our Executive Board is seeking the mind of Christ for our next executive director-treasurer. I pray for the committee every day, and I hope you do also. Let me remind you of who they are:
Tim Williams, chairman, Spartanburg; Tommy Cofield, Lexington; David Martin, Easley; Don Purvis, Hartsville; Betty Spradley, Rock Hill; Tom Swilley, Conway; and Dennis Wilkins, Bluffton.
We look forward to receiving their nomination later this year.