In 2017, I met regularly with my pastor and another servant of God for discipleship. We met after the sun had gone down and would spend two to three hours a week being shaped by the Word of God and navigating the issues of life through its counsel. At the time, I sensed I had grown in the Lord but lacked a framework of understanding that adequately pulled all that I studied into a cohesive framework of understanding. Our discipleship triad began to work through Jimmy A Millikin’s Christian Doctrine for Everyman: An Introduction to Baptist Beliefs. This was my first exposure to “systematic theology,” and it was during this study that my heart was pierced with an overwhelming burden for missions.
Previously, like most good Baptists, I knew missions were important and integral to fulfilling the Great Commission. I loved (and still do) attending mission rallies our local association hosted and receiving reports from missionaries we supported. Also, like most Baptists today, I lacked a genuine sense of urgency to be a part of the work God was doing around the world.
During my discipleship-triad’s study, the issue of man’s inherited nature of depravity came to the surface. I distinctly remember reading I Cor. 1:28-32 and the conversation that ensued. Ironically (considering the passage), my human thoughts got in the way of understanding what God’s Word taught. I was upset, even indignant, at the notion that people who had never heard the gospel, never had a preacher come to them, were condemned to Hell. Our meeting that night did not end with things resolved in my mind.
Our church had just hosted missionaries to Papua New Guinea who shared with us the distinctive language barriers on that small tribal island. It was a mission field in which dialects are so specific that as little as 50 people benefit at a time from translation efforts that deliver the Bible in their heart language. It is a slow work, and while efforts continue, hundreds of tribes have not had the gospel proclaimed to them. If what the Bible teaches is true, people are dying without ever hearing about Jesus.
Today, 165,000 people will die without knowing Jesus Christ.
My disciple-maker concluded our meeting with a phrase that has never left me. Its echo bounces off the hollow cavity of my mind when I wake up. When I walk down the grocery store aisle, traces of that phrase are called to my attention. As I drive along the highways and by-ways of Arkansas, passing strangers in their cars, I hear those words still. It took two weeks from our initial meeting before I was able to appreciate what was said. Wade Allen, a former BMA missionary to the Philippines and pastor of Temple Baptist Church in Rogers, gently leaned into my frustration and said, “This is our motivation for missions.”
On Feb. 25, our national work calls for a Special Emphasis on missions giving. The work we are involved in is biblical, practical, necessary and important. Our churches should give generously to the work with a cheerful heart. Our churches should give sacrificially to the work.
In this article, I would like to address how we give as participants in the work. Our role as churchmen is not limited to financing ministries. We’re called to be active partners. Our missionaries worldwide, throughout our country and our state depend on our partnership. They ask for more than our financial gifts; they also ask for our faithful prayers. We should understand that our arrangement as partners also includes an obligation within our churches today. As those who have been sent to labor for the Lord where we cannot, they depend on us to labor where we are. They cannot proclaim the gospel here, just as we cannot proclaim the gospel there.
The director of State Missions for the BMA of Arkansas recently acknowledged that “at this time, BMA churches are closing faster than we can plant them” in the special column, “How Do We Associate? (Part 2)” published in the Jan. 17 edition of the Baptist Trumpet. Our missionary zeal as an association of churches is a core element of our identity as associational Baptists. Our passion and drive start at home. We are in desperate need of organized and intentional efforts to balance efforts of evangelism in our own backyard as well as through associational work.
I am reminded of the sacrificial giving and evangelical zeal that founded our work together. You may or may not have heard of Mr. and Mrs. Oliver Glenn of Rockford, Ala. They operated a small country store and farm and attended Procter Creek Baptist Church. When Rigby Street Church organized and needed a property for their church house, the Glenns mortgaged their farm and store to provide the land for the church. Later, when Calvary Baptist Church of Huntsville, Ala., organized, the Glenns again mortgaged their farm and store to purchase the property for the church. A third time when Wares Ferry Road Baptist Church in Montgomery organized, the Glenns mortgaged their farm for the church. When Mrs. Glenn was 98 years old, she commented, “I always told my husband that we couldn’t afford to buy all that land, but we learned that God can always supply (our) needs.”
