I had dinner with a freedom fighter at the Southern Baptist Convention.
While the debates over amendments to constitutions and resolutions were occurring, June was resolved to go where no other missionary has gone to set people free through the hope of the gospel.
As we ate, we reflected on her journey to be commissioned as a missionary with the IMB at the Southern Baptist Convention. She was educated at one of our SCBaptist universities and discipled at one of our SCBaptist churches. She participated in Palmetto Collective to receive equipping and short-term mission experiences. BCMGo afforded her the opportunity to spend her summer on mission.
The SCBaptist team worked with her to complete her application for Journeyman and she spent two years going to unreached, unengaged people groups. She then completed 12 hours of seminary credit at one of our SBC seminaries to be prepared to be a career missionary. The next day, she would stand behind a screen at the SBC with only her silhouette publicly displayed to be commissioned to go.
I thanked her mother and father for their support of her during this journey. I encouraged her that 1,600 SCBaptist churches along with 45,000 other SBC churches had her back, and would give her support and 24/7 surveillance security.
Her mother then looked at me and said, “She is a child of the living Savior, Jesus. Who am I to keep her from going where He wants her to go?”
Thank God for women like June and her mother. We must be careful as Southern Baptists to not spend more energy articulating what we believe women should not do within the church than opening pathways for what they must do in going to the nations. Thank God for SCBaptists who work every day to support missionaries like June along the journey of seeing every life saturated and transformed by the hope of the gospel.
Our great country celebrates 250 years of freedom this month. Our forefathers saw fit for us to have freedom of religion with the ability to speak openly about our faith. Let us not take this freedom for granted and join forces with June as freedom fighters for the gospel to overthrow a spiritually oppressive regime that is holding humanity captive to sin. Let freedom ring.