Church Planting and Missions in The Next Decade
In the next two posts, I will bring this series of blog posts to a conclusion. My purpose in these posts has been to encourage independent Baptist church leaders to re-focus or remain focused on the historical position of our movement: a commitment to sound doctrine and a passion for the Great Commission. While your individual experience may be different, it is clear that, as a whole, our movement has been identified as one that devotes unhealthy levels of attention to non-essential or peripheral issues and even projects a divisive and critical spirit. I am not comfortable with that kind of stereotype.
Over the last few weeks, the discussion generated has been very interesting and I have personally received many responses to the thoughts on the blog. Some common questions continue to occur, both in the comments and in conversations I have had, "Is there really a future of independent Baptist churches working together?" and "What is the solution or answer to the challenges we face?"
Admittedly, these questions don't produce simple or absolutely conclusive answers.
Addressing the first question: There must be a future. Without much elaboration on statistics, two things are certain, independent Baptist churches (and all evangelical churches) are not planting enough new churches to keep up with population growth -- and -- our current missions strategy is disjointed, unfocused and inefficient at "bringing closure to the Great Commission."
I recently heard one of our missions pastors make this statement: "When we cease to maintain a mission-minded focus as a church [local churches and as a group of Baptist churches], we cease to exist." It alarms me to see us fighting and dividing among each other, which directly results in a slowed church planting movement and increasing burden to our missionaries (both those preparing and those on the field).
The Holy Spirit ought to be the dominant influence in our local churches and in our efforts to plant churches and fulfill the Great Commission. When our personal opinions on issues apart from core biblical doctrine begin to overshadow our approach to world evangelization, we are at an unhealthy place. All of us can recall a story of a missionary we support losing their support or involvement from another church because of an association they had or a standard/method they did or didn't adopt. Were they doctrinally sound? Yes. Were they committed to reaching their field with the gospel? Absolutely. But these became secondary factors in the decision making. This ought not to be so.
Let me be clear, doctrine (biblical doctrine) really matters, and we should be vigilant to defend the truth of the word of God and refuse to compromise. However, to allow division over non-essential issues to cause us to squander the resources and sap the energy of like-minded churches is inexcusable. Not only will we be slowed in moving forward in this generation, we are apt to paralyze the generations that come after us because of our modeling bad behavior.
For 200 years, our missions efforts have purposefully and strategically joined our churches together. It is very likely that my church and yours are connected in some way through a shared missionary relationship. The impact of the gospel stands to be strengthened or diminished by how we lead our congregations and behave toward one another. I am personally excited about what I see God doing in the leadership of our churches, and I'm passionate, energized and optimistic about independent Baptist church planting and missions in the coming decade.
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