Let’s Re-dream The Dream

September 2007

Where will the Southern Baptist Convention go for the next twenty years? In the past twenty-plus years, we have been involved in a protracted struggle over biblical authority. That battle, according to most Southern Baptists, is over, and we have established a pattern of faithfulness to the Bible in our various institutions. During this past twenty-plus years, we have been focused on the biblical question perhaps to the exclusion of other concerns.

Among the disturbing trends that we have seen in the past twenty-plus years has been a denomination wide decline in missions and evangelism. If we continue in the next twenty years as we have in the past twenty-plus, we can expect to see continued decline.

Let me say at this point that I don’t believe that the conservative resurgence is responsible for the downward trends in our denomination. It is natural that a long struggle will diminish our energies and our focus. There is no value is trying to place blame anywhere.

However, we need to begin to seek an agenda and leaders that will change our focus toward evangelism and missions. If we are to thrive in post-modern America, we must reinvent ourselves and bring our historic emphasis on evangelism and missions back to the forefront of our convention.

We need leaders who appreciate our commitment to the authority of the Bible, but we also need leaders who see the primacy of the Great Commission in the life of Southern Baptists.

We need leaders like our current president, Frank Page, who understand that the Cooperative Program is the lifeline of missions in our convention. We have seen the movement among many of our largest churches toward the concept of societal missions which dominates independent Baptist churches.

We, as Southern Baptists, did not achieve what we have in the area of missions by following the societal method. From the outset of our convention in 1845, we have followed the associational method of cooperating together in the sending of missionaries. The creation of the Cooperative Program in 1925 put our mission efforts on a new plane of effectiveness. We must find ways of reinvigorating the Cooperative Program if we are to excel again in missions and evangelism.

Let’s return our convention’s focus to what has made us great in the past. Let’s focus on evangelism and missions. Let’s plant thousands of new churches in the next twenty years. Let’s re-dream the dream of the Cooperative Program. Let’s not be satisfied with our size and wealth as a denomination. Let’s discover again the heart of God for a lost and dying world.

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