Once again, the annual meeting of the Southern Baptist Convention has come and gone. There was a lot of hype leading up to the convention regarding the Law Amendment, the future of sexual abuse reform, the Credentials Committee’s recommendations about certain churches, the financial viability of the SBC, and on and on. Many of us wondered how we would ever get everything done, because the amount of business was overwhelming. We were also concerned that our cooperative work might be irreparably fractured by the outcomes of certain votes.
Nevertheless, the messengers came together, heard the reports, participated in convention work, and voted on the various matters brought to the floor. While many of the votes revealed deep divisions in our convention of churches, I believe we left Indianapolis united around the main thing that brings us together: reaching the world with the Good News of Jesus.
The annual report of the IMB shone a light on the explosive population growth in our world over the last 200 years. In 1821, churches from associations across the state of South Carolina gathered at FBC of Columbia to organize the first Baptist convention in the South. At the time of the founding of the South Carolina Baptist Convention, there were just over 1 billion people living on planet earth. One hundred years later, in 1927, the population of planet earth doubled to 2 billion people. Over the last nearly 100 years, the global population has grown from 2 billion to 8 billion people. It is estimated that there will be an increase of 75,306,070 people on our planet by the end of 2024 and a total population of 9 billion people by 2036.
These statistics remind us of the sheer number of souls in the world who need to hear the gospel. They are not on earth by accident. God has created these souls in His image, and Christ has commissioned the church to go and make disciples of all nations. That’s why I am grateful to be a Southern Baptist. We have a plan to get the gospel to the nations. Together, we call out missionaries, train them, fund their work, and send them in the power of the Spirit to make disciples, baptize, train, and plant churches.
According to the IMB 2024 Statistical Report, “while almost 1.5 million people are added to the global population every week, recent estimates seem to indicate that, on average, evangelical Christians share the gospel less than a half million times per week.” What will we as South Carolina Baptists do in response to this reality? We cannot shrink back from the Great Commission, we cannot lose sight of the Great Multitude that John speaks of in Revelation 7, and we cannot withdraw from our cooperative effort as South Carolina and Southern Baptist churches. We must work hard to clarify our theological convictions and respond to challenges within our convention, then we must do the harder work of cooperating together for the sake of reaching the nations with the gospel of Jesus Christ. In light of the explosive population growth in our world and the overwhelming reality of global lostness, till all have heard, we must send the gospel to the nations.
— Wes Church, senior pastor of First Baptist Church, Columbia, is president of the South Carolina Baptist Convention.