Yesterday I had an encouraging experience talking, via conference call, with Pastor Ronnie Floyd and fifteen young SBC leaders/pastors. The topic of conversation was related to the future of the SBC and the Great Commission Resurgence. I was very grateful to take part in the dialogue and give my support for the efforts of Pastor Floyd and others who desire to reach the masses of people around the world by being better stewards of our SBC resources.
I’m thankful for the SBC and am here by choice. I believe in cooperating to reach the nations. To be clear, the Lord doesn’t need me or the SBC or any other person. But he chooses to use us by his grace. And I do desire to be used by God for the purposes that he’s already promise to bless (Matt. 28:18-20).
If you are not familiar with the GRC’s interim report given recently, you can view it and read it here.
This report has generated much interest. Thousands have viewed/read it, and reacted to it.
I’m not in position of commenting with expertise on the GCR. I’m not in the meetings. But I’m very excited about the potential of starting more and more churches in major cities that desperately need the Gospel and maximizing our resources to get the Gospel to the nations.
The GCR report was very helpful at giving us a picture of what we are facing. We’ve got to get out of the South, and we’ve got to engage the whole world with the Gospel.
I actually wrote a blog about two years ago on my “dream” of starting a seminary in NY and making it a hub for church planting, due to the numbers of lostness in the NE area. I also suggested that we rename our convention and remove “Southern.”
While these two things have not been topics of discussion (to my knowledge), the GCR report did place a heavy emphasis on church planting and global evangelism noting, for example, the 54 million in the New England area and the limited number of churches that are present.
I recently read in the SEBTS Outlook that we need 20,000 churches in NY City to have the same ratio of churches to people as in the South. It is truly staggering how many people live in the NE. We need our best leaders planting Gospel-centered churches in major cities, like NY.
Here’s what the report highlights:
- Do you realize that among the 340 million people living in North America, there are 258,000,000 people estimated to be lost and perishing?
- Do you realize in the seven states or conventions that cover Nevada, Arizona, New Mexico, California, Washington, Oregon, and Canada, there is a population of 92 million plus people with at least 82% of them being lost? Do you realize that we have only 3,983 churches and congregations in this entire region and 2,276 of them are in the state of California?
- Do you realize that in the nine northeastern states of Connecticut, Maine, Massachusetts, New Hampshire, New Jersey, New York, Pennsylvania, Rhode Island, and Vermont, there is a population of 54,924,000 plus people with an estimated percentile of lostness of 83%, and we have only 1,068 churches and congregations to penetrate this lostness?
The report goes on…
We need to embrace the reality of lostness, but we must also grasp it in a global context.
- The United States comprises only 4.5% of the world’s population of 6.8 billion people.
- Of the world’s population, there are 5,845 people groups who have no access to the gospel of Jesus Christ.
- From the 6.8 billion people in the world presently, 4 billion of them have little to no access to the gospel and 1.5 billion of these have never even had the possibility of hearing the name of Jesus and the message of the Good News.
I am in favor of anything that will help us fulfill the Great Commission and take the Gospel to the masses. I don’t know all the details about the GCR, but I can tell you that many of my young friends are stoked at the possibility of staying with the SBC in order to plant Gospel-Centered churches around the world and in major cities. They aren’t interested in much else. They certainly aren’t interested in politics or the status quo.
The convention should be filled with electricity this year. I suspect that we will see many more guys representing the 20-45 range, tweeting their comments and giving support to the GCR.