Tom Elliff, in his first trustee meeting as president of the International Mission Board, rolled out the beginning of the vision he believes “God painted on my heart.”
Tom Elliff, in his first trustee meeting as president of the International Mission Board, shared his vision that each of the remaining 3,800 unengaged, unreached people groups would be “embraced” by a Southern Baptist church. He plans to make the official challenge at this year’s SBC annual meeting June 15.Trustees elected a new vice president during their May 20 meeting at the International Learning Center in Rockville, Va., and were asked to pray for the final results of the 2010 Lottie Moon Christmas Offering for International Missions.
Trustees also approved 48 new missionaries. On May 22 at Mandarin Church in Los Angeles, 26 of those missionaries were appointed; the other 22 will be appointed during the Southern Baptist Convention’s annual meeting June 15 in Phoenix.
Elliff, in a brief preview of his IMB report to the SBC annual meeting, shared his vision that each of the remaining 3,800 unengaged, unreached people groups would be “embraced” by a Southern Baptist church committed to seeing that people group engaged with the gospel.
“I pray within 12 months of our Southern Baptist Convention,” Elliff said, “that we will see all 3,800 of those unengaged people groups with some church saying, ‘We’ve taken them on. We are reaching out embracing them. We’re going to learn about them. We’re going to pray over them. We’re going to strategize.’ “
Elliff also noted how the IMB needs to be more aggressive in facilitating younger generations of pastors and churches that desire to reach the nations. He affirmed that the mission board has significant value to “bring to the table” to a new generation of pastors that will benefit local churches and create fresh awareness of the SBC.
“It would be foolish for us to assume that those pastors and churches are simply going to choose to be Southern Baptist as a default position,” he said. “We must offer them compelling evidence that being a Southern Baptist and doing missions through the IMB is scripturally based, it is spiritually empowered and it is fiscally responsible.” – IMB