I was privileged last week to attend the service in Nashville where 101 new missionaries appointed by IMB and will be going overseas soon.
Baptist Press (story linked above) never fails to cover these events and well they should. The stories follow a familiar template: no real names are given, no name of countries where these will be serving, and short quotes about missionary calling for a few of them.
Frank Page was there and introduced himself as the SBC Executive Committee's "Chief Encouraging Officer." I like the guy, partly for stuff like that. I didn't see Thom Ranier. Tom Elliff preached. SBC luminaries abounded.
I don't get summoned to the Baptist Vatican for conferences with Frank Page, he doesn't know me from Adam's housecat, nor for consultations with LifeWay; however, I was summoned to this one because of a personal interest in two of the appointees.
There aren't many things SBC that do not interest me. The changes at NAMB deserve attention, the election of the next SBC president is important, the name non-change business is significant, and the ordinary, everyday SBC politics has innumerable junkies among us, but it might be helpful to remember that the SBC exists because, on a much, much smaller scale our predecessors wanted to see to it that some among them were put in other places in the world where the Gospel was desperately needed.
It still is. We still do. Thank God for that.
Baptist Press (story linked above) never fails to cover these events and well they should. The stories follow a familiar template: no real names are given, no name of countries where these will be serving, and short quotes about missionary calling for a few of them.
Frank Page was there and introduced himself as the SBC Executive Committee's "Chief Encouraging Officer." I like the guy, partly for stuff like that. I didn't see Thom Ranier. Tom Elliff preached. SBC luminaries abounded.
I don't get summoned to the Baptist Vatican for conferences with Frank Page, he doesn't know me from Adam's housecat, nor for consultations with LifeWay; however, I was summoned to this one because of a personal interest in two of the appointees.
There aren't many things SBC that do not interest me. The changes at NAMB deserve attention, the election of the next SBC president is important, the name non-change business is significant, and the ordinary, everyday SBC politics has innumerable junkies among us, but it might be helpful to remember that the SBC exists because, on a much, much smaller scale our predecessors wanted to see to it that some among them were put in other places in the world where the Gospel was desperately needed.
It still is. We still do. Thank God for that.
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