North American Mission Board president Kevin Ezell underscored the need to develop the next generation of Southern Baptist missionaries during NAMB’s trustee meeting Oct. 10 in Chicago.
“We have 45,000 churches, millions of Southern Baptists, and we have 600 student missionaries. That is unspeakably poor. We must do better,” Ezell told the 57-member board. “Missionaries don’t just happen. We must intentionally pray for and build the next generation of missionaries.”
Citing an SBC church death rate of about 900 churches a year after NAMB’s regional vice presidents reviewed North America’s staggering lostness, Ezell set forth NAMB’s missionary development process, which he refers to as a “farm system.”
The four-tiered process will allow for multiple age groups and levels of commitment. Training centers, established in conjunction with local churches, will be geared toward providing hands-on training while helping individuals discern their level of commitment and calling.
“Student missionaries,” serving terms of a few weeks up to a year, will explore their ministry calling while serving in a church or other ministry setting. Similarly, a missionary “intern” role provides aspiring church planters with hands-on experience in a church context under the guidance of a pastor or church planter. A church planter “apprentice” role allows men called to church planting to move to their particular ministry context and serve with an existing church plant as they begin building a core team. This role would develop into a church start, with a church planter serving at a strategic location in the same area.
Individuals in the farm system would primarily be placed in regions outside the South, with an emphasis on the 30 cities that are part of NAMB’s Send North America initiative.
Trustees saw firsthand the impact of such mentorship opportunities Oct. 8 as they met with Chicago church planters who were themselves building churches in the inner city while mentoring younger planters for the purpose of multiplication.
“Thank you for your faithfulness and your investment in this generation and the next,” Ezell told NAMB’s trustees. “And in all that God is going to do.” – NAMB