Missions fulfills the Great Commission
A key component of church strength is its ability to fulfill the Great Commission. In Acts 1:8, Jesus outlined four geographic mission fields: Jerusalem, Judea, Samaria and the earth’s uttermost parts. Each church can contextualize those fields into missions activities that are local, regional, national and international in scope. The Georgia Baptist Mission Board has employed missions consultants to walk alongside churches to help them discover strategic partnerships in all of those fields and to help them increase the participation rate of ongoing engagement.
Each of the six regions in the Georgia Baptist Convention are being supplied with potential church-to-church partnerships, opportunities to connect with church plants, and resources to equip their trips and to learn Spanish. For local missions, churches are being encouraged to utilize the expertise of their associational mission strategist. For regional missions, each region has an identified “most lost zip code” for coordinated missional engagement and church planting. For national missions, six state conventions (Utah/Idaho, Michigan, New York, Penn/South Jersey, New England, and Puerto Rico) are working to help connect their churches to ours. For international missions, six countries in Central and South America are engaged with their national leadership as well as the International Mission Board and other Great Commission Christian missionaries (including Guatemala, Nicaragua, Ecuador, Colombia, Peru and Argentina).
The Lord is raising up virtual strategy coordinators (VSCs) all over the state to help facilitate strategic direction within those partnerships. Using a master plan strategy, a church can engage in a zip code, in another state or in another country and know that its work is playing a significant role within a larger scope of ongoing missional activity.
Many churches have limited resources in planning, promoting or leading missions trips. Missions consultants within the GBMB are there to help a pastor or missions team simplify what might seem a complex task. Using calendar management strategies, a church can keep missions in front of its people year-round.
Using connections with sister churches, a church can expand its ability to pursue missions in ways never before thought possible. And using the team preparation tools located on gabaptist.org, a team can rest assured that its members are ready to take the trips and grow its people through missions.
Published April 5, 2021