Being more effective

Since the Great Commission Resurgence (GCR) Task Force’s report has come out, I have read nothing but negative articles about it in The Alabama Baptist, most of them attacking the jobs that will be lost if the GCR is passed at the convention.

The reason that this bothers me is because of the overwhelming support for the GCR at the last convention, and it seems that The Alabama Baptist has portrayed the GCR as a group of men getting together and changing everything without any input from the church.

Although the loss of these jobs are going to be hard if the GCR is accepted, it will be a hard thing that must be done to improve the convention.

God intended for the Church to be His missionary force to spread the gospel throughout the world, and so by putting the majority of funding into church plants, these missionaries who are losing their job will be replaced by churches — churches who will not only reach out to these people and share the gospel with them but will also bring them into a local community of believers.

So it’s not that the convention is saying, “Well we don’t have the money to reach these people, so we’re going to stop giving to them,” but rather that we need to take the money we do have and reach these people in a more effective way — through churches.

Lee Harper
Montgomery, Ala.