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LifeWay to ‘build bridges’
SAN ANTONIO?Building bridges, staying focused and concentrating on what really matters are priorities LifeWay will emphasize as it seeks ways to provide Southern Baptists with meaningful and relevant resources, said Thom S. Rainer, LifeWay’s president.
“It isn’t always easy to build bridges,” Rainer said during LifeWay Christian Resources’ June 12 report at the annual meeting of the Southern Baptist Convention in San Antonio. “And bridges are only as strong as their effective means of support. In the same way, building effective ministry bridges requires the well-known and time-tested principles of our faith. For LifeWay, building on [the foundation of Jesus Christ] is where we begin.”
Any effort to win the lost, disciple the saved and impact the culture will collapse among manmade efforts unless firmly built on the foundation of Christ, Rainer said.
One of LifeWay’s initiatives that has brought focus, Rainer said, is the “Invitation” CD, a compilation of inspirational music interspersed with a gospel presentation. LifeWay has sold the CD at cost in order to make it widely available.
“Through our desire to see people won to Christ, our passion for ministry to people and churches and our determination to be biblically sound and culturally relevant, LifeWay will continue to be a servant to the church, a co-laborer in the harvest and bridge builder to the lost. And our foundation is nothing less than the bedrock of Jesus Christ.”
Lost world waits, Rankin tells SBC
International Mission Board President Jerry Rankin told Southern Baptist messengers June 12 the stories of persecuted Christians everywhere serve as evidence of a lost world desperate to hear the gospel.
“Numbers can be overwhelming,” Rankin said, noting that “1.6 billion people have not yet heard the name of Jesus. ? Yet God’s desire is for all the world to know him, and he sent us with the responsibility to be his witnesses.
Rankin reported that in 2006 Southern Baptist missionaries and their partners baptized more than 475,000 new believers, planted some 23,000 churches and discipled more than 500,000 Christians.
Rankin also praised Southern Baptists for enabling God-called missionaries to go by giving the largest Lottie Moon Christmas Offering in history, a goal-breaking $150,178,098.
“Because of your faithfulness in giving,” Rankin said, “784 new missionaries were appointed and sent out to the ends of the earth.”
Ethics entity issues call for reformation
Richard Land thanked messengers to the Southern Baptist Convention for approving an “encouraging increase in funding” for the Ethics & Religious Liberty Commission, promising that the SBC entity will continue to be at the forefront in calling Southern Baptists to pray for reformation in America.
During his June 12 report to the convention, Land, president of the ERLC, said the commission is the SBC entity most dependent upon CP receipts since more than 90 percent of its funding comes from the Cooperative Program.
Earlier in the day the convention approved an increase in the ERLC’s share of Cooperative Program funds, from 1.49 percent to 1.65 percent of receipts sent from the states to the convention’s national and international ministries.
“The Baptist Faith and Message affirms a call to involvement with the world,” Land told messengers, reminding that Christians are to be the salt of the earth and light of the world.
Those who teach there is a gap between a social gospel and a personal gospel are failing to completely understand the biblical revelation, Land said. “There is only one gospel; it is a whole gospel for a whole people. We live in a society that is desperate to hear an authentic word from God, from God’s people sold out in obedience to him,” he said.
GuideStone reports financial strength
GuideStone Financial Resources enjoyed a banner year, O.S. Hawkins, president of the SBC entity, reported to Southern Baptist Convention June 12 in San Antonio.
GuideStone Funds marked its fifth anniversary in 2006, with Hawkins noting that it has been named
the fourth-largest mutual fund headquartered in Texas and the largest Christian-based socially screened registered mutual fund family in the United States.
For medical plan participants, Hawkins said the transition to a single provider network reaped rewards, as more than 57 percent of Personal Plan participants received no rate increase or reduction in premiums for 2006. “We have a retention rate of 98 percent,” he said, “and we’ve had thousands of new participants over these last few years.”
Hawkins emphasized the need for wellness initiatives to help contain future medical insurance costs and announced new insurance benefits for Southern Baptist seminary students,
Also, Hawkins reported that effective Sept. 30 of this year, GuideStone will relinquish its Cooperative Program allocation. This decision was announced during the SBC Executive Committee’s February meeting.
NAMB introduces new president
The North American Mission Board thanked the messengers at the Southern Baptist Convention annual meeting for the largest Annie Armstrong Easter Offering ever?$58.5 million?and its new president, Geoff Hammond.
Introducing Hammond and his wife Debbie, NAMB trustee chairman Bill Curtis said NAMB’s president search committee conducted a thorough 10-month search, resulting in the unanimous election of Hammond on March 21.
“This is one of the greatest privileges of my life,” Hammond said. “It’s a long way from a Southern Baptist missions hospital in Ogbomosho, Nigeria, to the North American Mission Board in Alpharetta, Ga. I’m here by God’s grace and I’m thankful to Southern Baptists for praying for me as a missionary’s kid, an IMB [International Mission Board] missionary and as a NAMB missionary.”
Hammond’s presentation to the convention then focused on the NAMB’s primary objectives: “We have drawn together all of our responsibilities under three main objectives: sharing Christ, starting churches and sending missionaries with our Acts 1:8 partners.”
“It will be a flexible, multifaceted approach that brings local churches, associations and state conventions together with a plan that can be customized for each mission context. The team will continue its work with a view to making this an emphasis at next year’s convention.”
Hammond said starting new churches continues to be a vital part of NAMB’s strategy to evangelize the United States, Canada and the U.S. territories.
“We have church planting missionaries and church planting leaders strategically located for the express purpose of church planting. We need to plant churches in people groups, population segments and geographical areas where there is a need for Bible-believing, evangelistic churches.”
Hammond said NAMB studies show that when a new church is started with the intention of planting another church within the first three years, that original church grows faster.
“God blesses the church that gives and we need to see a great movement in North America of churches planting churches, planting churches planting churches?” Hammond said.
Seminaries report successes, challenges
GOLDEN GATE
Jeff Iorg, president of Golden Gate Baptist Theological Seminary, said in his June 12 report to messengers that the seminary serves as both a reminder and an extender of the national identity and diversity of Southern Baptists.
“We have a distinctly West Coast, and western U.S., cultural feel?a reminder that Southern Baptists are a national denomination with a growing national identity. But you should also know that we are all, from whatever backgrounds, committed to the gospel of Jesus Christ and his kingdom.”
