Convention sermon contends evangelism includes discipling believers

For a generation of believers appalled at abortion and child abandonment, churchgoers seem content to let their “baby Christians” fall spiritually into that same terrible fate, said Morgan Bailey, pastor of Santuck Baptist Church in Wetumpka.
   
Intentional evangelism is important, Bailey said, but “though we rejoice when they are saved, we are not done yet.”
   
Bailey, who has led churches in Alabama and Florida as pastor for 20 years, delivered this year’s convention sermon on the last day of the annual meeting of Alabama Baptists. He urged messengers to be “willing witnesses that go with the gospel, give the gospel, then guide others to do the same.”
   
It’s a spiritual focus his church is already putting into practice, Bailey said.
Santuck was ranked in the top 3 percent of growing churches in America by the Billy Graham School at Southern Baptist Theological Seminary in Louisville, Ky., and received the Troy L. Morrison Leadership and Church Growth Award in 2000.
   
When a person walks the aisle at Santuck, Bailey said he asks the church who will make sure the new Christian is guided toward growth.
   
“The Sunday School teacher is standing nearby, the congregation is looking on and when I ask them whose responsibility it is to grow the person, they all answer – ‘mine,’” Bailey said.
   
But how do church members accomplish this? And how do churches get people to walk the aisle in the first place when much of the congregation is spiritually asleep?
   
It begins with developing hearts that are willing to go and to give, he said.
   
In Acts 8 — read before Bailey’s sermon by D’Linell Finley, pastor of Southlawn Baptist Church in Montgomery — a willing heart made all the difference in the life of an Ethiopian eunuch.
   
Philip was already in a posture to hear from God when he encountered the eunuch, Bailey said, and his observance and obedience made the sharing natural.
   
“He heard the Lord and did something we generally won’t do — he heeded the Lord,” Bailey said. “He didn’t hold a committee meeting to decide what to do, he simply obeyed. One reason the church is on the decline is that we are gripped in the paralysis of analysis.”
   
And, as a result, “we are just simply not going.”
   
According to Barna, it takes 41 Southern Baptists to reach one lost person, Bailey said. “Christ enlists us to go with the gospel. He expects churches and believers to go with the gospel. There are at least five commissions in the Gospels and Acts,” he said.
   
It’s time for Alabama Baptists to “wear the grace of God well,” Bailey said.
   
The fields are white unto harvest, he explained, and to reap souls Christians must first cultivate relationships. Hearts willing to invest in people can then use church resources to replicate themselves, Bailey said.
   
This giving of time carries over from leading people to the Lord to discipling them in the faith.
   
“Witnessing is a messy business, but aren’t you glad that someone got messy in your life so you could come to Christ?” Bailey asked.
  
Heaven is watching, he said. “What will you do with the gospel?”