Joy Bolton

I’m pleased to share a guest post from Joy Bolton, executive director of the Kentucky Woman’s Missionary Union. Joy provides leadership to state WMU work and consulting in all areas of WMU work. She coordinates the state missions promotion, Kentucky WMU Annual Meeting and works closely with the Kentucky WMU Executive Board.

Joy shares here that truly preparing for a Great Commission Resurgence isn’t so much about restructuring organizations or shuffling funding from one entity to another as it is about individual Christians getting serious about sharing the gospel with a lost world.

Preparing for a Great Commission Resurgence

Southern Baptists need a Great Commission Resurgence. The fact that we are even talking about it is a good sign that the Holy Spirit is at work in our midst, quickening our hearts. I believe that there is a deep desire for us to really be the people of God on mission in a lost world.

A Great Commission Resurgence will have much in common with a spiritual awakening. It will  be Holy Spirit driven and lives will be changed. Like a spiritual awakening, it will be longed for and prayed for before it becomes reality.

A Great Commission Resurgence will mean that we once again “make the main thing the main thing.” The lostness of the world will break our hearts and change our priorities.

While the call for a Great Commission Resurgence has come from a seminary president, and a task force has been appointed by the convention president, a true Great Commission Resurgence begins with believers who earnestly want to be obedient to the Lord Jesus and see such a resurgence grip our churches.

How, then, do we prepare for a Great Commission Resurgence?

1. Embrace the Great Commission.

Acteens sharing with a new generation

We must begin with learning the Biblical basis of the Great Commission and affirming that people are lost and going to hell without Christ. Studies show that many Christians, even many Baptists, are not firm in the conviction that Christ is the only way.  There is nothing that erodes the need for missions and evangelism quicker than this.  Why bother witnessing if you are not convinced that people without Christ are lost?

Settle this and then learn about the lostness of the world. The numbers are staggering. Not only are there unreached people groups in other countries, we have major cities in North America that are filled with people who are lost.  We have groups of people in every community that are unreached.

Learn how Southern Baptists send and support missionaries. Learn how the appointment process works and the ways that people can serve. Learn how the Cooperative Program and the missions offerings are used. Understand the roles of associations, state conventions, and the SBC in missions.

Teach what you have learned to someone else, including the next generation.  We have a responsibility to prepare our children for the Great Commission.  Missional values are both caught and taught. Through on-going missions teaching and involvement opportunities for all ages, we will prepare boys and girls, men and women to respond to God’s call and to be obedient to the Great Commission.

2. Pray for a Great Commission Resurgence

A Great Commission Resurgence begins on our knees. Pray that God would convict your church, beginning with yourself, of our apathy about the lostness of the world. I personally have missed many opportunities to be the witness that God wants me to be.  Praying to be convicted of my own apathy and failures is not comfortable. But if I truly long for a Great Commission Resurgence, it must begin with me.

Pray for the empowering of the Holy Spirit and for laborers in the harvest.  Pray for God to call out missionaries from your family and your church.  Pray for your children to be obedient to God’s call.

Pray for lost people in your community by name. Pray for missionaries. The Missionary Prayer Calendar will help you pray for over 10,000 missionaries in a year’s time.  Adopt an unreached people group and pray for them to hear the gospel.

3. Support the Great Commission

Give your time, money, skills, and other resources.  Give what you treasure.  Jesus got it right when He said, “Where your treasure is, there will your heart be also.”  Support the Great Commission through your tithes and offerings.  Be a spokesperson for the Cooperative Program and missions giving in your church.

4. Do the Great Commission

Remember that the mission field is where you are.  Be obedient to God and what He commanded. Whatever ministry you do, remember that the ministry is for the purpose of leading lost people to Christ. Go!

I long for a Great Commission Resurgence. I believe you do, too.  Be forewarned, however, that such longing and praying will mean spiritual warfare. Satan will attempt to use differences of opinion on the mechanics of the Cooperative Program, denominational structure, and so on to divide us. But we must pray on and press on to make the Great Commission the main thing, personally and corporately.