This post continues the GCR Myth Buster series I introduced earlier. Find links to the other posts released so far at the bottom of this one.

I’ve never heard anyone say specifically that missions work in the United States is less important than international missions work but I’ve certainly come across some who, in their commendable zeal to support our international missions effort, imply it.  If I understand correctly, their thinking seems to be that since we have many existing churches in the United States — especially in the South — there’s no real need for a cooperative effort among Southern Baptists through associations, state conventions and the North American Mission Board to reach the lost here at home. The churches and individual Christians, the logic goes, should be all the missionary force we need here in the United States so all missions giving should therefore go for work outside our home country.

To a certain extent, I can understand and sympathize with this thinking. There’s a sense among some Baptists that having organizations to coordinate missions work at home becomes a crutch for churches and individuals who would rather simply give money from behind the walls of their church buildings than actually get out there and “be” the church by ministering and witnessing in their home communities. They believe that without these broader organizations, churches would come closer to realizing that reaching our communities will take the personal involvement of every Christian.

Probably all of us have at one time or another been guilty of the sin of not sharing our faith. I know that I have certainly failed to take advantage of opportunities to share the Gospel and for those failures I feel ashamed. As many have said already, a true Great Commission Resurgence isn’t going to be about organizational structures or Cooperative Program allocations, but about all of us as individual Christians getting our hearts right, our feet in motion and our tongues wagging about Jesus.

Even so, I believe it is very important for us to use every means possible for reaching those here at home as well which includes making use of various missions and church strengthening organizations to help us be more effective as individual Christians and churches.  To me it’s a matter of recognizing the need and then trying to come up with the best approach possible for meeting that need.

First, let me address the need. All any of us who live in the United States needs to do, no matter where we live, is to drive around our communities, read a newspaper or turn on the television for 15 minutes to see that our nation is far from being reached for Christ.  Even in an old-line Southern Baptist state like Kentucky we see all kinds of lostness.  We see the lostness of individuals who have not grown up in Christian families and whose greatest exposure to Christianity is in driving by church buildings or clicking by TV preachers. We also see the lostness of individuals who have some cultural connection to Christianity, i.e. “Momma used to go to church” or “Granddaddy was a preacher,” but who have no real relationship to Christ themselves because they see themselves as “good, decent people.” We also see the lostness of individuals who are what we call here, the “de-churched.” These are individuals who were once in our churches and have probably “heard” the gospel but for various reasons, real and imagined, have drifted away and show no fruit indicating that they know the Lord.

This lostness is not imagined. It has been documented in a variety of ways. According to research conducted by NAMB, some 251 million people in the United States and Canada — that’s three out of every four — are lost. Here in Kentucky, according to research conducted by the Barna Group on behalf of the KBC, nearly 1 million Kentuckians are unchurched with another 650,000 not committed to the church on whose roll their name appears. The Association of Religious Data Archives estimated that nearly 1.9 million of Kentucky’s 4 million population in 2000 had no affiliation with any religious group. No matter how you want to cut it or whose numbers you want to use, the point is that there is a great need for missions on our own continent and in our own country and state.

So, if there are a lot of lost people all around us, isn’t reaching them the job of the local church? Yes! Definitely! Of course! Communicating to the lost who surround us is the responsibility of each Christian and each local body of believers. This means that I have a responsibility as a Christian to share personally with those in my family, neighborhood and other spheres of influence. My local church has a responsibility to share directly and as effectively as possible with all of those in its local field.

But this doesn’t mean that we can’t or shouldn’t also work together on association, state and national levels. Some strategies work best by pooling our resources. Disaster relief is a good example of this. Our volunteers go out wearing the yellow shirts to meet both the physical and spiritual needs of the people who are served. Sure, a single church can go and do a disaster relief project. But I think we all have seen that we can be much more efficient when we pool resources and coordinate our efforts.

Or, for an even more directly evangelistic example, think about the Find it Here evangelistic emphasis in which Kentucky Baptists are currently engaged. I’ve never seen a more cooperative evangelistic effort as pastors have worked through their associations to divide the geography to ensure that every household we can possibly get to will receive a gospel presentation from Southern Baptists in the weeks leading up to Easter this year. Churches, associations, the state convention, the Kentucky Woman’s Missionary Union and NAMB are working closely in a coordinated fashion that leverages the strengths of each organization for maximum effectiveness on this project.

None of this diminishes the importance of international missions though. We have a world of some 6.7 billion people out there who also need to hear about Jesus so we definitely need to draw attention to this and do all we can to reach everyone. But we’ve got to get beyond wrestling among ourselves for limited resources (which I think is really the bottom line of this myth) and seek instead to enlarge the pot.

For instance, right now on average here in Kentucky, 93 cents of every undesignated dollar that a person puts into the offering plate, stays in the local community for local church operations, ministries and missions. That leaves 7 cents to be divided among the state conventions and Southern Baptist Convention for all of the other work that takes place across the nation and world. And where we’ve ended up in part with the GCR is a scramble for how best to divide up that 7 cents. At times it reminds me of football players trying to recover a fumble on a muddy field.

But what I am most reminded of right now is Jesus’s feeding of the 5,000. When we serve a Lord that took five small loaves and two fish, fed 5,000 men (plus women and children) and then had the disciples collect 12 baskets of leftovers, why are we so worried over the finances of missions? Isn’t our God rich enough to supply the funds needed to meet all of the needs?

I believe SBC President Johnny Hunt got it right when he called all Southern Baptists to a special day of prayer on Jan. 31. And I hope the praying goes on and on and on because I am convinced that when God senses that our hearts are truly broken for the lost and that we have all given up on striving for our own agendas or defending turf, He will open the floodgates of heaven and show us His power in a way that none of us can imagine.

That’s when we’ll know that missions is international, national and as local as the house next door.

–Robert Reeves

Previous Posts in this Series:

• Great Commission Myth Busting
• State Conventions Stretched, Not Bloated