Many times when we begin to think about the Great Commission, there are thoughts that enter our minds. For those of us who can remember what life was like before HD projectors, retractable screens, and computer-generated multimedia presentations, we think about when missionaries would come to our church on a Sunday night with their slide projectors. I can still remember the sound those machines would make as each slide, which sometimes was upside down, would show what was happening in an area of the world that I had never heard of. I remember sitting in a pew at Motlow Creek Baptist Church and thinking how cool would it be to one day fly to an area of the world that needed to hear the good news. Growing up in rural South Carolina, it seemed that it would always be just something I would hear about and never be able to be a part of. Man, how times have changed.
AtkinsIn just a few weeks, I will be leaving to lead my 13th team to Romania. Growing up, the only thing I knew about Romania was that it was the country where Transylvania was, and we all know who lived there. I never dreamed that it would become the “International” mission field that God would place a deep love for within my heart. From sitting in a pew as a child to sitting on a plane as an adult, God has shown me that the Great Commission is for all of us, not just those brave men and women He calls to full-time service as missionaries.
The call to make disciples of all nations in years past meant that the only way we could reach people from other areas of the world was to send missionaries. Today, that is part of the equation, but now the world has come to us as well. We do not have to go very far in our hometowns to see people from all over the world living and working right here. We do not have to wait to be sent out as a missionary to reach the lost of the world, because the lost of the world are being sent to us. They are being sent to start a new life, to find a way for supporting their families back home, and they are being sent to you and me so that we can go “International” with the good news without ever leaving South Carolina.
There are still thousands of areas that will only be reached by the missionaries that our Cooperative Program and Great Commission giving dollars send out from the IMB to spread the gospel. It takes all of us as SCBC members giving all that we can to penetrate darkness by shining the light into the darkest of places, and it takes all of us as SCBC members doing all that we can here as well. We can no longer sit and pray for the Lord to send. We have to be men and women striving daily for Great Commission Living and saying, “Here am I, Lord, send me “International.”
– Atkins is pastor of Powdersville First Baptist Church and president of the South Carolina Baptist Convention.