DALLAS—Go Now Missions celebrated 70 years of sending college students on mission by commissioning 223 student missionaries to share the gospel around the world this summer.
Family members pray with a newly commissioned Go Now student missionary. (Photo / Leah Reynolds)The ceremony, held May 22 at Dallas Baptist University, welcomed both past and present Go Now missionaries to celebrate students who have gone and will go to the ends of the earth.
Since 1946, Go Now Missions, a ministry of the Baptist General Convention of Texas, has mobilized 10,346 Texas university students to serve as missionaries across the state, country and world.
The first team consisted of four Baylor University students who conducted revival services in Hawaii. Since then, students have traveled near and far to engage in varied ministries to reach a vast array of people—from children and college students to homeless people—with the gospel.
The 70-year celebration ceremony featured keynote speaker Keith Parks, former president of the Southern Baptist Convention’s International Mission Board and coordinator of Global Missions for the Cooperative Baptist Fellowship.
Parks’ passion for missions began in 1948 when he served as a Texas Baptist summer missionary to San Andres Island, Colombia.
“My spiritual understanding and the catalyst of what God used to tell me what he wanted me to do with my life took place when I was a summer missionary,” Parks said.
At the close of the ceremony, former student missionaries who served from the 1940s to recent years were invited on stage to pray for the 2016 summer missionaries.
“We humbly thank the Lord that he would choose to use Texas university students for seven decades to be a part of bearing his gospel and being his servants all across our nation and the world,” said Brenda Sanders, Go Now Missions consultant since 2001.
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In the last year, Go Now has mobilized a record-breaking year total of 526 missionaries, combining students commissioned for the fall semester, Christmas break, spring semester and summer.
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