Chapter 9
What Can I Do?

God is mobilizing His church and His people to join Him on mission. This is not something we are trying to make happen; there is already a momentum being generated. We must recognize this as a wave of the future and conform to these realities for the advantages God intends in our missions task.

One of the compelling reasons for restructuring our overseas organization in 1997-98 was to be positioned to assimilate the growth that was envisioned. Many missions are following the leadership of their regional team to eliminate the traditional organization that diverted missionary time and energy to committees and a bureaucratic decision-making process.

We must move away from the time-consuming processes that limited strategic decisions to the annual mission meeting and required large-group consensus before anyone could launch innovative initiatives. Cooperating in smaller team configurations focused on a specific people group or geographic entity provides more ownership of strategic planning and results in more effective mutual accountability. It creates an efficient and flexible process and liberates everyone to contribute their gifts and assignment in implementing the strategy.

Rather than each mission working exclusively as IMB missionaries, the new structure also provides greater potential for mobilization of other resources among Southern Baptists and other Great Commission Christians. Volunteers, short-term personnel, church partnerships, overseas Baptist co-workers and other evangelicals should not be seen as impositions but as assets and resources. We must recognize that God desires for all the ends of the earth to know Him and worship Him. As Sovereign over the nations, He has provided all the resources needed for His Kingdom purpose!

On the Field
Missionaries on the field should work with others to envision and create strategies that incorporate all the resources God may choose to make available. They should identify broad and diverse opportunities for utilizing volunteers, not so that success is dependent on them lest they not materialize but as a bonus when they do. The Volunteers in Missions Department and a network of personal contacts and partnerships can be enlisted to encourage people to “Come over to Macedonia and help us.”

Tasks that can be filled by ISC and journeyman personnel should be identified as a way to nurture those who may come back to fill personnel requests. Every missionary should generate a network of prayer intercessors and take initiative in being adopted by one or more churches that will personally identify with the work. Missionaries must take the risk of conferring with others and creating alliances with evangelical Christians who share a common vision and purpose.

Most important of all, missionaries must be conscientious about communication, sharing with their network of family, friends, churches and other partners what God is doing and the challenges being faced. Too many newsletters are filled with family news and are simply accounts of “activity.” Ability to communicate a passion for a target people and effectively share testimonies of how God is at work will get people involved. Missionaries can thank God for the Cooperative Program, but they better communicate as if their next support check depended on their communication and personal appeal.

Stateside Assignment
It is wonderful that time is provided for missionaries to rest, visit family and friends, and get away from the stress of cross-cultural living for awhile during a periodic furlough. But it should be recognized that this is a stateside assignment. Just as Paul and Barnabas returned to Antioch and reported to the churches about their missionary journeys, it is important to report to the churches.

People want to hear about how God is at work. Missionaries must tell their stories in ways that will give a picture of a lost and hurting world and that will challenge involvement in praying and giving. God can use missionaries to call out the called and challenge all to consider at least short-term involvement.

Personnel on stateside assignments should attend a stateside-assignment conference as soon as possible to interact with other missionaries and review their global perspectives. These conferences will help create a unity with Richmond support staff and extend understanding of the vision of administrative leadership. They will equip missionaries to understand and relate to a changing society and church life.

“Speaker coordinators” are being placed in most states to assist in plugging missionaries into some strategic churches which might otherwise never have a missionary speaker. IMB personnel have full liberty to determine their own deputation schedules and where they will speak, but we are asking them to be available for at least one IMB-scheduled event for each month of stateside assignment so that we can staff the growing number of mobilization opportunities.

Giving consideration to spending part of one’s stateside assignment in a new work state, working with ethnic congregations or serving as a Missionary-in-Residence at a seminary, college or with a state convention will enrich the stateside experience of missionaries and will vastly expand the mobilization potential throughout our convention.

We must not take for granted the massive, generic support Southern Baptists provide to the International Mission Board; a new boomer generation that is now in church leadership wants to know where its money is going. More than that, these boomers want to be personally involved with where the money goes and what it does. That’s not how things were done in the past but, instead of bemoaning the loss of traditions, let us celebrate the increased potential available to impact a lost world and lead Southern Baptists to be on mission with God.

<previous | next page>