Small-church leaders urged to answer the Hope 1:8 challenge

BELTON—Small-membership churches and their leaders have a key role to play in spreading the gospel—beginning at home and extending around the globe, speakers told a statewide gathering.

Baptist General Convention of Texas Executive Director Randel Everett and seminary professor Joel Gregory addressed the 24th annual meeting of the Texas Baptist Bivocational and Smaller Membership Ministers and Spouses Association , July 9-11 at the University of Mary Hardin-Baylor .

Everett challenged the group to participate in a new Hope 1:8 initiative, based on the mandate given to Christians in Acts 1:8 to be witnesses for Christ “in Jerusalem and in all Judea and Samaria and to the end of the earth.”

Hope 1:8 follows the Texas Hope 2010 initiative, which sought to encourage Christians to pray for the state, feed the hungry and spread the hope of Christ with the spiritually lost.

“If you look at Acts 1:8 and we think about Texas Hope 2010 that we’ve come from, we are challenging our churches that we all are involved in to develop our own Hope 1:8 strategy,” Everett said.

“I pray that you’ll go back and you’ll be able to say through your church: ‘What is my Jerusalem? What is my Judea? What is my Samaria? …’ We want to be the ministry partner to really help you reach Texas.”

Members and leaders of bivocational and small churches will be an integral part of making Hope 1:8 successful, Everett stressed.

“It’s something that you can’t do by yourself,” he said. “No church really, regardless of the size can reach Texas by itself. But collectively, we come together and work with other Christ-followers from unions and fellowships to try to reach our state for Christ.”

The first key to being an Acts 1:8 church is being Spirit-empowered, Everett said. The second key is being indigenous by connecting with specific groups. The third key is being a holistic church that meets both the physical and spiritual needs of the lost. The final key is the involvement of the entire church—not just the church’s ministers.

Gregory, professor of preaching at Baylor University’s Truett Theological Seminary , encouraged pastors to learn lessons from John the Baptist, whom he called “the first Christian preacher.”

John the Baptist would tell ministers that “the act of proclaiming and bearing witness to the Lord Jesus Christ is the most important thing going on,” Gregory insisted.

Next, he would urge modern-day gospel messengers to “preach with a specificity that creates something of a crisis,” causing the audience to ask, “What must we do?”

“If this Acts 1:8 priority is to become the case, we need to discover a kind of preaching that means, ‘What must I do?’ And that means preaching to the culture, not being trapped in the culture,” Gregory said.

Gregory also suggested ministers recognize the role they were given through the example John the Baptist set.

“In these days of Acts 1:8 emphasis, he would leave a memo saying, ‘Understand that your role is a preparatory role,’” Gregory said.

Gregory likened ministers to bulldozers that clear the path and prepare the way for Christ to reach the people of Texas. Like John the Baptist, who denied he was the long-awaited Messiah, ministers must recognize they are not the ultimate authority. Jesus is.

“One of the challenges of our day is to get rid of every pulpit prima donna and every diva because you can’t preach Jesus and try to compete with him in his own house,” Gregory said. “We have to make some disclaimers about who we are not before we can say who he is.”

Gregory concluded with a final suggestion from John the Baptist: “Wait for the assessment of your ministry from Jesus.”

Ordination, congregation and education are not accurate measures for the quality of a preacher, according to Gregory. Jesus is the only one who can assess the success of a preacher.

During the annual meeting, the association re-elected officers—Tony Tawater, pastor of Lone Willow Baptist Church in Cleburne, as president; Rosalind Ray, pastor’s wife from Fairy Baptist Church in Fairy, as first vice president; Richard Ray, pastor of First Baptist Church in Wink, as second vice president; Ellen Goodson of Memorial Baptist Church in Denton as secretary; and Danny Rogers of Field Street Baptist Church in Cleburne as treasurer.