LIBERTY, Mo. (BP) — Nathan and Rachel Rose had felt called to overseas missions. They prayed. They searched the Scriptures. They participated in missions. As they did, God clarified the call.
“I felt like the Lord was just reminding me that you could go and be on the front lines or you could stay home and encourage people to go, send people and raise money and support for missions,” Rose said. “We felt like, if we’re not going to be on the frontlines, we’re going to be at a church that is creating and fostering an environment where people are getting sent overseas, as well as providing resources.”
Now, as the lead pastor of Liberty Baptist Church in Liberty, Mo., Rose and his team have developed a system to mobilize and train church members to become a new generation of pastors and missionaries.
Liberty is among a growing number of Southern Baptist churches that are not only discovering potential ministry leaders but playing a leading role in preparing them to serve in North America and around the world. Last month, SBC Executive President Ronnie Floyd launched Vision 2025, a plan to see Southern Baptists reach “every person, every town, every city, every state and every nation with the good news about Jesus.”
As part of that vision, Floyd called on Southern Baptist churches to: “Increase our total number of workers in the field through a new emphasis on ‘calling out the called,’ and then preparing those who are called out by the Lord.”
The call, Strategic Action 3, is a critical part of fulfilling the first two action points — sending 500 more missionaries and adding 6,000 additional churches in the next five years. To achieve these goals, local churches will need to discover more potential leaders and work with seminaries to train them.
“As the church prays, God calls. As God calls, the church calls out those who are being called,” Floyd wrote in a February article on Vision 2025. “Regardless of the size of the crowd and the size of the church, God is calling people into the ministry of the Gospel. Pastors, educators, evangelists, leaders and missionaries are right now being called out to take the Gospel into places where the Gospel has never been before.”
Reaching the goal of expanding the number of ministry leaders called and requires engagement from a variety of entities within the Southern Baptist Convention. For example, last year the North American Mission Board launched its Multiplication Pipeline to help churches discover and equip future church planters and church planting team members in their congregations.
Gateway Seminary also launched the Call Project at youth and college events, which emphasizes a call to ministry and provides resources for those who sense that call. In 2019, 277 people indicated a call to ministry at 37 events in 13 state Baptist conventions throughout the West.
But local churches are at the heart of the SBC’s plan to train more leaders for ministry.
Rose describes Liberty Baptist’s effort to train members as two tracks. The first is the church’s Pastoral Training Center, led by church member Jared Wilson. Wilson also serves as an assistant professor of pastoral ministry at nearby Midwestern Baptist Theological Seminary. The training center focuses on an 18-month cohort-based process where men discuss assigned readings, participate in individual and group coaching and take part in “on-the-ground ministry experiences.” These experiences include teaching, preaching, evangelism and accompanying Rose on pastoral care calls.
Many of Liberty Baptist’s participants, who must be either church members or working toward membership, are also enrolled at MBTS, but seminary enrollment is not required.
Liberty Baptist, which has 300 in attendance on a typical week, has also a newer and more informal process to develop and deploy potential missionaries. Rose says he regularly challenges the entire congregation to consider God’s call to missions. The church operates a missions house, where missionaries on furlough can come and stay free of charge. The church creates opportunities for members to engage with these missionaries and learn more about the missions experience. Rose also says the church has created fellowship groups around missions that meet regularly where people sensing a missions call can share a meal and discuss where they are in the process. They also work toward getting these members on a mission trip so they can experience intercultural ministry firsthand.
“I think it begins with the preaching that calls people into missions, but honestly we have a lot of people in our church who are missions-minded and wanting to go overseas and trying to figure out how can they not only go overseas but help other people go overseas,” Rose said.
Source: Baptist Press
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