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AUSTIN?The SBTC’s SENT missions conference drew 500 participants April 19-20 to Great Hills Baptist Church in Austin to hear plenary speaker Reggie McNeal and to network with missionaries from around the world.
“We want to mobilize churches and help them live missionally in their communities,” said Tiffany Smith, the SBTC’s missions mobilization associate. “Throughout SENT, we see the spontaneous networking of church leaders and lay leaders with missionaries and with each other, and that personal contact is invaluable in raising the missions bar in the local church.”
The conference doubled in attendance this year.
Smith said lay leaders, particularly, who attend the conference magnify their churches’ missions effectiveness because they get training reaching different cultures and are able to spread their enthusiasm to their fellow church members.
“This is a unique conference because it is so diverse in age,” Smith said. The conference drew everyone from teenagers to college students, she said.
McNeal, director of the leadership development office at the South Carolina Baptist Convention and a prolific author, talked about the rise of the missional church and detailed how churches and church leaders may capitalize on an increasingly diverse culture.
McNeal urged attendees to get out of the church business and get into the kingdom business.
He asserted, “We have been looking at the kingdom through church lenses; we need to look at the church through kingdom lenses.”
He also challenged the crowd to move beyond a church-centric view of God’s work in the world and join God in the streets.
Nicole Leighman of Christ’s Way Baptist Church in Bryan, said, “It was a wonderful experience and I can’t wait to get home to put everything I’ve learned into action.”
Representatives from the Southern Baptist Convention’s International Mission Board and North American Mission Board were among missions organizations attending, as well the Hudson Valley Baptist Association of New York, which has a missions partnership with the SBTC.
Breakout sessions covered topics such as “Globalization: Living Missionally in a Flat World,” “How Your Church Can Start Many New Congregations,” “Christianity Facing Islam,” “Reaching Those Who Will Not Come,” and ‘Skipping Samaria: The Cultures We Miss On Our Own Continent.”
The SBTC recognized the top giving churches to the convention’s Reach Texas state missions offering.
Per capita leaders were First Baptist Church, Clayton (1-100 members); Grace Community Baptist Church, Dayton (100-250); First Baptist Church, Quitman (250-500); Parkside Baptist Church, Denison (500-750); First Baptist Church, Henderson (750-1,000); First Baptist Church, Odessa (1,000-1,500); First Baptist Church, Rockwall (1,500-2,500); and Houston’s First Baptist Church (2,500+).
Total giving leaders were: First Baptist Church, Rockwall; First Baptist Church, Odessa; Castle Hills FBC, San Antonio; Cielo Vista Church, El Paso; Parkside Baptist Church, Denison; First Baptist Church, Dallas; Spring Baptist Church, Spring; Houston’s First Baptist Church; Lazybrook Baptist Church, Houston; and Nassau Bay Baptist Church, Houston.
