Embracing people groups … ‘regardless of the cost’

CEDAR HILL—”I can’t think of anything that is going to fire up churches in Texas about giving to the Cooperative Program like what has happened here,” declared Southern Baptist Convention President Bryant Wright at the Embrace Equipping Conference in Cedar Hill on Oct. 27.

The conference was one of three nationally the IMB is hosting for churches exploring or committed to reaching an unengaged, unreached people group (UUPG).

Wright praised SBTC Executive Director Jim Richards for challenging Southern Baptist churches in Texas to engage 1,000 of the UUPGs and giving $1 million from SBTC reserve funds to the Lottie Moon Christmas Offering for International Missions.

“With that priority of giving outside the state while ministering in the state and putting their money where their mouth is … challenging churches to do this, if that doesn’t get you fired up about giving to the Southern Baptist missions enterprise, I don’t know what will,” Wright said. “You’re blessed to be part of a convention like that.”

Johnson Ferry Baptist Church in Marietta, Ga., where Wright pastors, increased its CP giving, said Wright, noting the encouragement he found in many state conventions voting to send more of the undesignated receipts from local churches to fund out-of-state Southern Baptist causes.

Wright praised the missionary focus of host church Hillcrest Baptist, which adopted an unreached people group (UPG) two years ago and now plans to embrace an unengaged UPG after receiving training at the Oct. 27 event.

Evangelize, Disciple, Reproduce
Meanwhile, International Mission Board President Tom Elliff told the 320 Southern Baptists representing 130 churches and 19 states: “The fact that you’re here this morning tells us something radical could and perhaps is happening.”

IMB personnel representing nine affinity groups described opportunities to take the gospel to, at last count, 3,774 UUPGs.

“It seems God has just breathed a fresh wind of his Spirit and is blessing what seems to be becoming a movement,” Elliff said. He described the Embrace strategy as   churches that “evangelize and disciple authentically through discipleship that produces reproducing churches.”

Once reproducing churches are established, Elliff said, “We will consider this an area that has engagement by believers of their own ethno-linguistic culture.”

Even as God has blessed the new strategy, Elliff cautioned, “Anything remains that way until we try to put our fingerprints on it and contain it in our organization.” Warning that God doesn’t share his fame with anyone, Elliff added, “We want to be careful to give him honor and glory, with an understanding that God is sovereign and we’re his bond slaves. We serve him and serve one another as well so that other people can hear this wonderful announcement that Jesus saves.”

The IMB president carefully explained the motivation that is grounded in theological conviction. “There’s nothing we can do to twist the arm of God and make Jesus come off schedule,” Elliff said, alluding to Jesus’ statement in Matthew 24 that the gospel would be preached to all nations before his return.

“But we do know that although we cannot cause the return of Christ by anything we do, coincidental with the coming of Christ there will be a moment when every language, people, tongue and nation bow to worship the Lord Jesus Christ,” he said. “People out of every one of those groups will be gathered around the throne worshiping Jesus Christ.”

Elliff rejected the notion that missions should be “left to the professionals,” reminding those gathered that missionaries are sent out from local churches. “We facilitate that, train them and try to give them some idea about strategy, but ultimately they come from your local churches.”

He and Wright issued a challenge last June for Southern Baptist churches to “embrace” all of the UUPGs by next year’s SBC annual meeting in New Orleans. The upcoming SBTC annual meeting will encourage Texas churches to embrace at least 1,000 of that number during a Nov. 15 missions focus in Irving.

Elliff laid a foundation from Luke 11 about the importance of prayer in engaging unengaged people groups, then turned the program over to the IMB’s Gordon Fort and Scott Holste to explain the nuts and bolts of embracing UUPGs. Afternoon breakout sessions allowed opportunities to meet with nine affinity group missionaries to receive coaching and learn about further training.

Giving, Going
Addressing the closing session of the conference, Wright shared how his own congregation had been transformed as mission endeavors became “the most spiritually impactful ministry” in the past 20 years.

“This year we’ll have about 40 percent of our Sunday morning attendance going on 75 mission trips to 30 nations around the world,” Wright said. “It’s not because we’re constantly pleading and badgering the people to go. It’s just been a God thing in the life of the church when people get outside their comfort zone and begin to go into a culture that is different to share the gospel of Jesus Christ.”

Describing the change that takes place among individual church members, Wright said, “It changes their worldview, their outlook about sharing their faith, and they come back excited with their fellow believers in the local church.”

Wright pointed to a new paradigm that no longer relies entirely on the IMB to send personnel to areas around the world as churches merely “support and pray for them.” Instead, he said, “The new paradigm international missions is the churches coming to the forefront and stepping out to take on this responsibility where the IMB is the facilitator, the trainer, the one that connects us all.”

Referring to the “gospel of the kingdom” described in Matthew 24:14, Wright said, “The churches are called to lead the way.”

Furthermore, he said, “The only way denominations and local churches are going to have an impact on the kingdom of God is what we do in the will of God in building up the kingdom of God. Otherwise, our local churches, our denomination is absolutely useless to the Lord’s work.”

He said Christ has given local churches “a clear message to take the gospel to every people group,” pointing to Revelation 7:9 as “the end game that drives the mission of the church.”

Wright prayed that the training would result in a “moment of destiny” for churches in attendance. He anticipated a day when many of those who are just now beginning to accept the “Embrace” challenge will “get to meet some of those people in that people group that you led our church to and some other people groups for friends from other churches and have all eternity to get caught up in fellowship in the kingdom of God.”

One of those people groups that Embrace conference participants sought to explore includes the 35 million deaf people around the world. Affinity Global Strategy Leader Mark Sauter told a breakout group, “I grew up as a little boy in Indiana with a call to missions, but I had no idea it would be to deaf ministry.”

Sauter’s wife, Vesta, was raised in the home of deaf parents and felt called to minister to the deaf. After pastoring in Princeton, Ind., the couple was appointed by IMB to serve in Europe where they sought to plant churches among deaf people. The strategy was extended to Asia where the Sauters helped local deaf believers develop an indigenous church planting movement. Now they lead the IMB’s global efforts to reach the deaf around the world and are enlisting deaf and hearing churches to embrace deaf UUPGs.

“Three-fourths of the places we go, we’ll hear someone say, ‘We’ve been waiting for you. We knew someone was coming to tell us something,’” Sauter told the breakout session, encouraging participants from churches with a deaf ministry to expand their reach around the world through the Embrace strategy.

The facilitator for the European Peoples Affinity Group session explained the role of the IMB in the new paradigm Wright referenced.

“Part of this process is not so much you partnering with us, but us coming alongside and saying, ‘We bring all of our resources, everything we have to the table,’” the IMB leader shared. “How can we help you take the gospel to the people God has called you to?”

He and other session leaders stressed the importance of taking the time to discern God’s direction before embracing a specific unengaged, unreached people group. “Do not go beyond this point with your church until the Lord has made it clear this is the people to whom I am sending you. Anything else will not last.”

“The leadership of your church will come and go, people will come and go, but the church says, ‘Our church continues to be called by God to this people group,” he added. At the very minimum, a local church that is interested in embracing a European UUPG would be asked to commit to eight years of seeking to develop that overseas relationship, the leader advised, recognizing the post-Christian condition that exists even in a region where the Reformation was birthed.

Michael Cloer, pastor of Englewood Baptist Church in Rocky Mount, N.C., described his own congregation’s success in utilizing a common interest in fishing to embrace a people group. Any strategy must be “biblical, simple and reproducible,” he told a breakout group.

“Embracing a people group is more than just signing on a dotted line,” added the affinity group leader for South Asia. “It’s a commitment to seeing the gospel flow through that community regardless of the cost,” he said, describing the geographic, financial, cultural and political challenges.

However, some of the solutions to those challenges “sit in your congregations, your seminaries, your Bible schools, and your homes,” he added. “All of a sudden you get this business person in your church who says, ‘That’s not a challenge. We could start a business there,’ and it gives us open access to a people group.”

Describing “the beauty of partnering,” Sauter said, “That’s why we’re so thrilled to see churches and leaders coming to find out what Embrace looks like for South Asia.”

His wife encouraged churches to ask whether they are being obedient to the next step. “God is calling us to work among these people. They have no access to the gospel. Let’s prepare ourselves and take the next step and see where it leads.”

That’s exactly what Annie Falconer of Greenville intends to do. After attending Embrace with eight other members of Highland Terrace Baptist Church, the 74-year-old woman told the TEXAN, “I may not be as active as I would like due to health, but there are a lot of things I can sit and do.”

As their van headed home, the group looked forward to a debriefing when they would decide their next step of embracing a UUPG.

It’s not that Falconer doesn’t already have plenty to do directing Good News clubs for children in her community through Child Evangelism Fellowship.

“I need to do more than just one thing and I was especially interested in the way IMB is reaching out in Central Asia to people from all of these countries who are our neighbors here in Texas, too,” she said.

While more than half of the participants in the second Embrace conference came from Texas, the remainder traveled from the states of Alabama, Arkansas, Florida, Georgia, Iowa, Kansas, Kentucky, Louisiana, Maryland, Mississippi, Missouri, Oklahoma, New Mexico, North Carolina, South Carolina, Tennessee, Washington and Wyoming. Leaders of two local Baptist associations, Criswell College and Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary also participated.

Upcoming conferences will be held Nov. 4 at Applewood Baptist Church in Denver and March 24 at Immanuel Baptist in Highland, Calif. To learn more about how a church may embrace an unengaged, unreached people group, visit call2embrace.org or sbtexas.com/embrace.