While we moan and groan over our numbers, and wrestle with strategies, God is using Baptists all over the world to touch human need and change lives. Each week I hear amazing stories of how God is using youth groups, VBS, summer mission teams, backyard Bible clubs, camps, block parties, disaster relief workers, and people from across the spectrum of Baptist life to speak and put on display the Good News of Jesus. Could it be that we do at times suffer the paralysis of analysis? Maybe we should abandon the meeting rooms more often and put feet to the things we believe, like we do so readily in the summer.
HolmesIt just proves the point a military commander told me once. Front-line troops rarely complain about their conditions. Usually they’re so intent on the mission, focused on their assignment, they either don’t take time to complain, or they don’t actually notice the water in their foxhole or the lousy rations. On the other hand, rear-echelon troops, off the front line, are most often dissatisfied with conditions. Maybe there really is something to the adage my mother repeated so often! You know, the one about idle hands and the devil’s workshop. Summer missions gives us a shove. Maybe we should experience this push year round!
So what happens out there in our small communities, through the mission hearts of local congregations, often goes unreported. There has been repair work in local schools, bottled water delivered to road construction teams, household improvements in the homes of the elderly and infirm, construction work in church plants, distribution of personal items to the homeless, meals prepared for emergency and fire personnel, vests purchased for police officers, and numerous other servant ministries right here in our own back yards. I’m not sure where all of these missional experiences are reported on the ACP, or how we factor them into our ministry plans. But they’re there, they’re real, and they defy our obsession with statistical measurement.
There’s more. Summersalt. Camp LaVida. Camp McCall. Music camps. White Oak Conference Center. Listening sessions. The Big Youth Thing. Training events. Prayer summits. Small group training. Somehow most of these things slip to the backwaters of our mission awareness. Now hear this! We are part of something significant.
Sometimes we forget the dimensions of our work! The bigger picture of 42,000 churches, 17 million members, 5,000 international missionaries, 5,000 North American missionaries, six outstanding seminaries plus everything else, translates into mission impact. In the state, 2,103 churches, 691,000 members, 43 local associations, seven outstanding institutions, and a skilled, committed convention staff means that God has strategically positioned us to influence our state.
Incredible! That’s the word that comes to mind. Sure, I’d like to make some changes here and there, adjust our meetings more to the times, fine-tune our ruling documents, and brings the lostness of the world into sharper mission focus. But while we’re plotting the proceedings of the annual meeting, working through the Great Commission Resurgence Task Force report, mission is happening all around us.
It is incredible!