November is coming quickly, and along with it, the 2023 Annual Meeting of the South Carolina Baptist Convention. Our 2023 theme is “Let’s Go,” as we lean heavily into the Great Commission. Since our inception as a convention, in response to God’s call for us to reach the nations, South Carolina Baptists have always had an eye on faraway places. Many of our forebears (and contemporaries) have served (or are serving) internationally, in short-term, mid-term, and long-term roles.
Our international missions priority was most recently evidenced by a five-year partnership established in 2019 between our convention and IMB personnel serving among what is now known as the Asia-Pacific Rim Peoples Affinity Group. Because the pandemic cost us a year of travel opportunities, the partnership was extended by one year during the 2020 annual meeting; therefore, our partnership commitment runs through November 2025.
In support of this vital commitment, our emphasis this past year has been to move beyond the “praying, giving, and sending” facets of engagement (all of which are very important to continue), and into the “going” facet of engagement. We have always had our eyes on faraway places, but it is now time for us to take our own hands, feet, and voices to the people of those faraway places, under God’s leadership (which He has copiously supplied in His Word).
Innumerable image-bearers in the Asia-Pacific Rim (and all over the world) need people like us to come share the good news of Jesus with them, and they do not realize it. They are waiting, without even knowing, maybe, for someone who will never even come. Many of them would believe in Jesus, if they just had the chance to hear from a true believer, deployed on incarnational mission.
This year’s four convention sessions will move us through an immersive and sequential thematic arc. The first three will reflect three motivating realities: Darkness, Calling, and Impact. They will be, successively, jarring, convicting, and encouraging. These three sessions will build toward the fourth, which will culminate in a powerful service of Response, that will be all about a commitment to go.
These thematic thrusts will be highlighted, in order, by Paul Chitwood, president of the International Mission Board, who will bring a gripping and haunting message on the tragic reality of spiritual lostness; by your current convention president, who will speak on the biblical calling to go, based on Paul’s vision of the Macedonian man in Acts 16; by Greg Mann, affinity global strategist for IMB’s Asia-Pacific Rim Peoples Affinity Group, who will preach on what happens among the lost in faraway places when people like us go to them with the gospel; and, finally, by Tom Elliff, a former missionary, former pastor, former SBC president, former IMB president, and now the director of the Tom Elliff Center for Missions at Oklahoma Baptist University, who will draw the net with a convicting message calling each of us to international missions engagement.
These sessions will include other theme-related segments, as well as reports from our newly minted executive director-treasurer, Tony Wolfe, and members of his amazing and faithful staff, whose names are too numerous to mention, but whose contributions are of incalculable value. We will also hear from various hard-working and devoted convention committees, and, of course, our highly valued ministry partners. We will also praise and worship Jesus together in each session, supported by gifted and genuine worship leaders and musicians. And, of course, we will also conduct the necessary and important business of S.C. Baptists.
Please accept my enthusiastic (and emphatic!) invitation for you to be present for, and to participate in, what I believe will be an eternity-changing annual meeting at Shandon Baptist Church in Columbia, on Nov. 13-14.