Picture with me a football stadium filled with South Carolina Baptists who have participated in missions in their Jerusalem, Judea, Samaria or their ends of the earth. Now, add to that image the people who have given financially or who have given other resources in support of that mission. Finally, add those who have prayed, the travel agent and the medical personnel who gave immunizations. The stadium would be filled with those who are sharing the good news of Jesus throughout the world.
McDowellNow, picture a stadium filled with those who are still without the hope and light of Jesus. Approximately 6 billion people would be in this stadium. If you pictured the unchurched just in South Carolina, you would see approximately 3 million.
These two images remind me to celebrate the impact that South Carolina Baptists have made around the world. They also are a staggering reminder that we have only just begun.
In 2008 we began to seek God’s guidance for the next steps on the partnership mission journey of the South Carolina Baptist Convention. During my 21 years of coordinating state convention partnerships, I have seen a growing number of churches become involved in hands-on missions involvement and have seen churches move to focus on ongoing strategic partnership relationships. Listening to the passions of our churches and seeing the urgent need to impact lostness in our state, nation and world led us to conversations with the North American and International mission boards to explore options for new partnerships beginning in 2010.
God used a number of factors to lead us to expand from one North American and one international partnership to 10 kingdom connections that we will highlight in 2010. These connections are strategic in impacting lostness and provide a variety of options for church and association participation.
As a part of the state convention’s desire to be used by God to mobilize more South Carolina Baptists toward Acts 1:8 obedience, we are launching a new partnership focus: “South Carolina Baptists: A Witness to the World.” Here are 10 kingdom connections we will focus on beginning this year:
? South Carolina: school partnerships, multi-housing ministry, multiethnic ministries;
? North America: Ohio, Nova Scotia, Atlanta;
? International: REAP North – Peru, London, Delhi, India, Northern African and Middle Eastern peoples in four different countries.
I am excited about the opportunities for churches to adopt a borough in London or a micro-people group in Peru and become the strategic partnering church. We also have project requests for veterinarians, business leaders, special needs ministry, golfers, and other specific interest areas that have been untapped by many missions strategies. There is also a new focus on global people-group adoptions.
Prayerfully consider how you and your church might be led to participate in these connecting points and how God may be calling you to invest in the longer term to go deep into these locations of lostness. More details on each focus area are available at www.scbaptist.org/missions.
For churches already in involved in strategic missions relationships, God is using you to move people out of the stadium of darkness and into his light. I pray that this expanded state convention focus will encourage others to the next level of Great Commission obedience.
– McDowell is director of the missions mobilization group of the South Carolina Baptist Convention.