I am at a crisis of belief.”
This is what David Platt, pastor of The Church at Brook Hills, Birmingham, told messengers to the Southern Baptist Convention annual meeting Wednesday morning. “Do I really believe this book is true?” he asked, holding up his Bible. “Do I really believe this book radically changes my life?”
If the Bible is true, “then the implications are staggering,” Platt said.At least 4.5 billion people on the planet today are headed for an eternity in hell. And 16,000 children die each day from starvation, he said.
“If that is true and if the Bible says that all throughout the history of God’s people He has chosen to measure the integrity of our faith by our treatment of the poor, we don’t have time to play games with our lives and we don’t have time to play games with the Church.”
Preaching from Acts 3, Platt challenged believers to pray for a radical concern for the needs of the world.
“I want my life to count, and I want the church I pastor to count for the nations,” he said. “God, raise up a church that is no longer content to wait for a tingling feeling to go down our spine to cause us to rise up and do what we’ve already been commanded to do.”
Christians don’t have to ask what God’s will is, Platt said — “God has already commanded us to go proclaim the gospel to all nations.”
“So what happens when not just missionaries but when pastors, music ministers and staff members of churches, accountants and engineers and teachers and lawyers and stay-at-home moms — when we all realize we are all created for and to accomplish a Great Commission? When we look at houses, cars, our stuff and lifestyles in light of the radical needs around world? What happens when we begin to trust boldly in the name of Christ, when we commit our lives to telling the nations that He is great?” Platt asked. “When that happens, the lost find a Savior and the poor find a helper and the Church finds a God who satisfies more deeply than any and every thing else this world has to offer. God, may it be so.”
Platt’s message was one of four that developed the annual meeting’s “LoveLoud” theme.
Detailing how to “LoveLoud for the Kingdom,” Vance Pitman, senior pastor of Hope Baptist Church, Las Vegas, told messengers during the Tuesday evening session that it is vital that the Kingdom become Southern Baptists’ No. 1 priority. “But what does that look like?” he asked.
The Kingdom is “God’s sovereign activity in the world resulting in people being in right relationship with Himself,” Pitman said. It is characterized by three truths: God’s Kingdom is alive with activity, full of opportunity and exclusive in its glory.
Pitman said Southern Baptists must “die to our programs and traditions” and realign our focus with the work of the Father — whether it’s Southern Baptist work or not.
This includes tossing aside “an institutional approach to missions” and getting involved personally through faithful prayer, generous giving and going, he said. “It would be great if we got so consumed with a passion for the kingdom of God, the only credit we cared about is the credit and the glory that belongs to Jesus Christ.”
Danny Akin, president of Southeastern Baptist Theological Seminary in Wake Forest, N.C., and Jeff Crook, senior pastor of Blackshear Place Baptist Church, Flowery Branch, Ga., also preached on the theme during the meeting.
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