Southern Baptist missionaries risked mounting persecution abroad – for daring to tell the world Jesus is the only way to peace with God.
But people are as hungry for the truth at the end of the second millennium as they were at the beginning of the first, when Jesus Christ Himself delivered the message. Southern Baptist missionaries and their overseas partners baptized 363,703 new Christian believers last year.
That’s almost 1,000 baptisms per day – or “one Pentecost every three days,” noted the Southern Baptist International Mission Board’s (IMB) annual statistical report for 1999.
The baptism total topped 1998’s record mark by 4.3 percent. The other key categories of total churches, new churches, mission “preaching points” and church membership also reached record highs. Total Baptist churches affiliated with IMB work climbed to 52,186, a 10.5 percent increase. Total church membership jumped 9.5 percent to more than 4.9 million.
Missionaries and their partners started 4,748 churches, an 11.7 percent increase over 1998’s record. And total “preaching points” – potential future churches and key indicator of strategic growth – soared 21.5 percent 38,363.
Many of those new churches and mission congregations are being born in tough places – like a communist country where hundreds of Baptist lay missionaries have sparked a wildfire house-church movement.
A lay couple there moved to one of the birthplaces of the country’s communist revolution. No known believers lived there when they arrived, but they have baptized 68 people and started two churches. Nearly all such churches meet in homes. Couches and kitchen chairs become pews; tiny bedrooms become Sunday Schools.
Elsewhere:
-More than 4,000 soldiers were baptized in a single day at a military base in South Korea. They marched in columns into large swimming pools during a worship service led by new Baptist World Alliance President Billy Kim.
-In Uganda, seven Baptist young people and two adult leaders led 650 students to Christ in a period of one week.
-Church groups sprouted in a North African country as tribesmen responded to the gospel despite years of civil war and wanton murder. A worker described the joy he felt when he baptized 10 new believers in a bathtub. “To have worked for years to get the gospel for this country and now to be baptizing people,” he said, his voice breaking with emotion. “And the larger churches are having baptisms almost every week.”
-In Honduras, churches reported decisions for Christ, baptisms and new missions points in larger numbers than ever before, as Baptists, missionaries and volunteers ministered in the aftermath of Hurricane Mitch. “In 32 years of missionary service, this is the most unprecedented thing I have ever seen,” said missionary Max Furr. “We have people coming, not asking for food or a building, but asking us to bring the Word of God to them.”
-In Kenya, more than 22,000 people received Christ as Savior during a monthlong evangelistic campaign. The outreach drew 332 U.S. volunteers and saw 132 congregations started.
-In Brazil, more than 4,500 people made decisions for Christ on the streets of Salvador during the raucous carnival celebrations.
The worldwide growth continues “an upward trend that characterized much of this decade,” the IMB report for 1999 said.
“Seven of the last 10 years have set records for growth across most of the IMB’s key result areas. (BP)
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