Carlisle Driggers recently passed a small church that was taking on a new building project, and he noticed a sign that explained, “We’re building for kingdom growth.”
Carlisle DriggersDriggers, former executive director of the South Carolina Baptist Convention, took that as another confirmation that the message of the national Empowering Kingdom Growth emphasis he helped launch was indeed taking root across the Southern Baptist Convention.
“In 2002 in St. Louis when the EKG proposal was made by the Executive Committee to the SBC, it was voted on unanimously. We knew at that point that it was going to take a while for it to really begin to take root across the SBC because it was quite a different concept,” Driggers told Baptist Press.
Previously, Southern Baptists in general had talked about the kingdom of God, but they hadn’t focused squarely on Jesus’ call to the kingdom in Matthew 6:32-33, said Driggers, who developed EKG in South Carolina before it spread nationwide.
“What began as an effort in reaching churches one by one has become a true national movement that continues to gain momentum and impact entire states,” said Morris Chapman, president of the SBC Executive Committee. “Many Southern Baptists for the first time are learning what it is to be kingdom-minded.”
Ken Hemphill, a former president of Southwestern Baptist Seminary, was tapped as the national EKG strategist in 2003, and in addition to writing extensive resources to equip churches for kingdom thinking, he travels more than 200 days a year, helping Southern Baptists implement the initiative.
Hemphill reports that he hardly ever goes into a state anymore where there’s not some sort of emphasis on Jesus’ call to the kingdom.
“They might not call it Empowering Kingdom Growth, but it’s a call to the kingdom. So it’s been kind of a quiet movement,” said Driggers, who is chairman of the EKG ad hoc advisory committee. “It’s been hard to know how much the emphasis has really taken hold, but we know that there’s been a lot because churches, associations, some institutions – colleges and so on – have included in their work an emphasis on the kingdom.”
“Providentially, God sent a man highly capable of writing all the materials in God’s timing, teaching the people and encouraging the pastors,” Chapman said, adding that EKG is in good hands under Hemphill’s leadership.
Even with a full schedule of traveling around the convention, Hemphill is challenged by the task of informing all churches of the potential behind Empowering Kingdom Growth, and he hopes more churches will catch the vision and participate in the movement.
“I think it fits well with the Great Commission Resurgence, the whole idea that we have to have a renewed vision for the Great Commission and think about restructuring both our denomination and the local church to give priority to the kingdom advance,” Hemphill said.
Driggers, who saw EKG’s success firsthand in South Carolina, warned that on the larger scale of the Southern Baptist Convention, EKG is a process that is “not going to happen overnight.”
“It’s going to take time. We’ve just got to stay with it and be very persistent, very patient. Keep preaching it, keep teaching it and give God a chance to bless it, and we’ll see results,” Driggers said. “It’s a quiet movement of the Holy Spirit. I’m convinced of that.”
Chapman envisions the EKG movement lasting as long as churches, associations and state conventions determine it meets a spiritual need. “Hopefully – EKG will continue flourishing and spreading to Christians – who have grown bored with a ho-hum practice of their Christianity,” Chapman said. – BP