The Great Commission Resurgence

At the recent Building Bridges conference my president and friend Danny Akin presented a stirring challenge, calling the convention to a Great Commission Resurgence.  I am obviously prejudiced, but I believe President Akin to be one of the most, if not the most, capable leaders of our time.  His message (heard online not live) took me back to my seminary days, and gave me great hope for the students I now teach.

My first annual SBC meeting came in 1985 at Dallas, where over 45k crammed into every meeting place possible for what would be a historic convention. I brought my young wife Michelle and a new believer to the Pastor’s Conference where my soul was stirred. The next day Michelle and I arrived at the main event.  At the time we did not know the future of the convention. I did not know for sure whether I would be a Southern Baptist twenty years down the road. But brave and bold men like Paige Patterson and Adrian Rogers and others gave young fellows like me hope for the future.

I was conservative before it was cool; I never actually quite got over Sunday school. But I heard things taught in my Baptist college days that gave me pause, so I became a soldier in the Conservative Resurgence without being drafted; I readily enlisted.  While the Conservative Resurgence was both necessary and important, it was only the first of two major steps needed.

David Dockery recently spoke to our faculty on campus. I asked him about something he wrote some time ago, actually printed from a lecture.  He had said in summary that two things happened in Southern Baptist life in the 50s that brought us difficulty. First, an overly zealous commitment to higher criticism in our schools of higher learning, where the interpreter elevated himself over Scripture, undermined our theological moorings.  Second, we adopted too great an emphasis on programmatic ministry. After all, the main strategy for evangelism in the 1950s was called “The Southern Baptist Program of Evangelism.”

I believe the Conservative Resurgence dealt decisively with the first problem.  It is true, as Dr. Akin reminded us in his address, that the battle for the Bible is never over.  But we did turn back the tide of emerging liberalism in the Resurgence.

However, we are only now beginning to deal with the second problem, that of an overemphasis on programmatic ministry. Programs are not evil; they are quite helpful. But they are not the point. And they, as overwhelmingly the choice of Southern Baptists in my lifetime, have not worked as well as we would have hoped. Baptisms have flatlined at best, while we have created and promoted the best programs on evangelism in the history of the church. From CWT and EE, to FAITH, to WW40 or ESPN (ok, I made those up), these approaches have no doubt been blessed by God and led to the salvation of many. But I fear the zealousness of getting people involved in our programs has over time led to the unintended consequence of losing the Gospel in the middle of our programs.

I believe we need a Great Commission Resurgence. I believe programs like we use now can be a positive part of that resurgence. But we will not have a true resurgence if the agenda is convincing people to use this or that method, even to the glory of God. It will come as all of us come together, seminaries training on the front end, associations and state conventions and the national convention all working together, to encourage NOT the participation in agendas, but the movement of God seen throughout history when followers of Jesus actually acted like followers of Jesus and became fishers of men.  It will come as we spend less time trying to copy one another and more time alone with God seeking His vision for our ministry. It will come as preachers unashamedly preach the Gospel, not as an occasional emphasis, but handling the Scriptures well, teaching the flock by faithful exposition of the Word, the amazing riches of the atonement and the glorious change Christ makes. It will come as men of God spend less time at the computer screen and more time in the homes of lost people. If we continue to imply that evangelism is simply getting a small percentage of our people to show up one night a week to talk to strangers for an hour rather than challenging every believer to be a witness in their neighborhood and workplace, we not only denigrate the Gospel, we are poor disciple-makers. Or, if we teach that evangelistic meetings (which I still greatly affirm) play the primary role in reaching a community, we deny the book of Acts where they NEVER invited people to a meeting—they either were the event because God so obviously moved among them and people came to see what was happening, or they simply took the Gospel into the culture. 

Please do not hear me decrying our heritage. Programs are helpful. We should be hosting more evangelistic meetings, not less. But we have developed an attitude toward the Great Commission that is essentially a “what is the least we can do annually and weekly” approach.  Our Lord is worthy of much more. It is not either-or, it is both-and. But lately it seems to me it is only—only programmatic evangelism, that is.

Program-worship has also affected our discipleship. It seems that if we have the right curriculum and teacher and get people into a classroom for enough sessions that “poof” we will create disciples. That experiment has failed. That is why a resurgence of mentoring pushes churches to life on life training more and more.  Again, classes are helpful. But they are secondary, not primary.

We need a Great Commission Resurgence. We need more; we need a God-intervention in our culture. We need to search our hearts. I need to search my heart.  There is a great big world out there desperately in need of good news, and we have it.

I teach students who are hungry to change the world through the power of the Gospel. They do not seek denominational status or worship at the altar of Thus Says the Convention. But neither are they convention haters. They love Jesus and they love the SBC, as did I twenty years ago (and still do). I want to see them zealously serving Christ twenty years from now. But it will take a Great Commission Resurgence for that to happen. A new generation of leaders, including people from as varied of places as seminary presidents, agency heads, college leaders, pastors, and more than a few laypeople, are rising before us with a desire not to ignore our heritage but to embrace it.  But also with a passion not to worship our recent past, but to spring from it to build a future that more and more resembles the Bible we defend and preach. I for one will join that movement.