June 11, 2001

Dying missionary pleads with Baptists to go
___By Shawn Hendricks
___Missouri Word & Way
___NEW ORLEANS--Dying of lung cancer, missionary Charles Beaty limped onto the stage of the Southern Baptist Convention June 12 to urge Baptists to share the gospel throughout the world.
___His challenge climaxed the International Mission Board's annual report.
___"It has to be us," said Beaty, who recently traveled with his wife, Christie, on a mission trip to North Africa after being diagnosed with terminal lung cancer. "If we don't go, whom will we send and who will go for us?"
___Beaty was one of several IMB representatives who shared testimonies of lives being changed on the mission field. Baptists held hands and prayed for Beaty before he left the stage.
___IMB President Jerry Rankin said more Baptists must follow Beaty's example.
___"What about you?" Rankin asked messengers. "The urgency of reaching a lost world has led many others to respond."
___Last year, 879 new missionaries were sent out by the IMB, Rankin reported.
___"Many going to places we would have never imagined," he said. "The uttermost is being reached as the number of people groups and strategic population segments being impacted by your missionaries has almost tripled to more than a thousand in just the last three years. Southern Baptists are not only going to places all across the former Soviet Union, Eastern Europe, Central Asia, they are going in record numbers."
___In the last two years, the number of short-term volunteers has increased from 20,000 to more than 30,000, including more than 3,500 college students and almost 2,000 high school students, Rankin said.
___"Record numbers of college graduates are giving two years to the Journeyman program, more and more Southern Baptists 50 years and older are offering themselves for service with the Masters program, and the number surrendering their lives for career appointment continue to grow," he said.
___Missionaries also reported 451,000 overseas baptisms in 2000--a 24 percent increase over the previous year, Rankin said. Church starting movements continue to rise as more than 38,000 additional mission congregations were reported, he added.
___Baptists must continue to commit to the mission field, Rankin said.
___"In spite of this progress, multitudes are still waiting," he declared. "How long must they wait until we go? The world for which Christ died was not that of our comfortable homes, neighborhood shopping malls and well-appointed offices."



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