We must challenge the next generation of Southern Baptists to “go tell the story of Jesus,” Jerry Rankin told messengers at the annual meeting of the Southern Baptist Convention in Indianapolis.
Speaking to several thousand messengers and guests, the president of the International Mission Board urged Southern Baptist leaders to “fulfill the mission” by passing on the missions torch.
“What about the next generation?” Rankin asked. “Will we nurture in our children and grandchildren God’s heart for missions, or will they simply emulate the self-centered indifference of our generation?
“We are seeing God stir in the children, young people and students of today a passion for missions and [a desire] to make a difference in our world,” he said.
Messengers watched a video of a vision trip into the Peruvian Amazon that Rankin made with his 12-year-old grandson Zachary. The pair spent time visiting with Xtreme Team missionaries who worked among a remote tribe known as the Yaminahua.
“I wouldn’t be surprised if this (trip leaves) a lingering impression that has something to do with God’s call on his life,” Rankin said shortly before introducing Zachary on the convention’s stage.
Rankin also introduced messengers to 25-year-old Bobby Lane, one of the Xtreme Team members who guided them through the Amazon. Lane talked about his own call to the mission field.
“God has a role for all of us. It took me a little while to figure this out, but God finally showed me that I’m not here for me and I’m not here for them [the Yaminahua]. I’m simply here out of obedience to what God called me to do,” Lane said.
Rankin took time to reflect on the rapid growth of the gospel in the decade following the IMB’s “New Directions” campaign. Launched in 1997, New Directions was a paradigm shift that reorganized the board’s structure and strategy in order to intensify its focus on the world’s unreached people groups.
Rankin cited South America – the missions emphasis for 2008 – as a prime example. One of Southern Baptists’ oldest mission fields, the IMB has been sending missionaries to South America for more than 100 years. Rankin said history has created the misperception that the continent has been evangelized.
“We are so grateful for those people who, though the years, have come and given their lives in South America,” said Dickie Nelson, regional leader for International Mission Board work in South America. “Many, many good things have happened. But South America is a big continent. Is it reached? Not yet.”
Nelson told messengers that more than half of South America’s 700-plus people groups still have little or no Christian witness. Many are indigenous tribal groups that live in isolation, deep within the continent’s jungles or among its remote mountains. But Nelson said many are also lost in the concrete “jungles” of South America’s cities.
“There are 41 cities in our region that have more than 1 million inhabitants,” Nelson said. “There’s incredible lostness in those cities.”
Rankin underscored the urgency of lostness, reciting a litany of natural disasters that have kept hundreds of thousands from a relationship with Jesus.
“Multitudes continue to enter eternity never knowing that a Savior died for them,” he said. “Do we not hear those in other countries and cultures crying out in despair and hopelessness like the disciples in the storm-tossed boat on the Sea of Galilee pleading, ‘Carest not that we perish?’
“Do we, as God’s people, not realize that one day we will stand accountable before our heavenly Father for fulfilling the mission He has committed to us?”
Rankin challenged, “We must involve our churches, we must mobilize our members that the world might know that Jesus is the answer.”