Churches need to move from a “member mentality to a missionary culture,” Reggie McNeal told members of Alabama Baptists’ Strategic Initiatives Task Force Aug. 19.
“We’ve turned leaders and a lot of Christian lay people into mechanics working on the machinery of the church,” said McNeal, director of the leadership development team of the South Carolina Baptist Convention.
The Strategic Initiatives Task Force is charged with developing convention-wide ministry emphases and focuses for Alabama Baptists for the years 2005–2011.
To be effective, today’s leaders will need to transition from “church transformation to community transformation,” McNeal noted. “The church in North America doesn’t need a methodological fix, it needs a missional fix,” he observed. “To turn people from members to missionaries requires a whole different leadership style.”
Today’s leaders need “microskills,” such as conflict management and a “visioning capability,” McNeal said.
Even pastors who don’t personally develop the vision of a local church need to be able to “give the one good speech … to articulate the vision,” he stated.
Training volunteers
Rick Lance, executive director of the Alabama Baptist State Board of Missions (SBOM), said disaster relief will continue to be one of the major components of “missions mobilization” from the SBOM.
“We’re going to be much more intentional in our training of volunteers,” Lance said. “The thing we have to do is ‘missionize’ our people. We can’t mobilize them until we missionize them.”
Bobby DuBois, SBOM associate executive director, said education about the Cooperative Program (CP) will continue to be vital in fostering Great Commission Ministries among Alabama Baptists. “We have one program in Alabama: the Cooperative Program,” DuBois declared. “That’s the only program our staff promotes, and we’ve come to the conclusion here at the State Board of Missions that the starting point for CP education has to be our staff.”
During September, the SBOM staff will attend workshops that will review the CP’s history as well as its present impact.
“The idea that we give through the Cooperative Program is an accurate one, but we also receive from the CP,” DuBois pointed out. “A large percentage of dollars from the State Board of Missions goes back to local churches and associations.”
Ron Madison, director of associational and cooperative missions for the SBOM, emphasized the need for church planting as a key strategy for reaching Alabama for Christ.
“We have more churches than we’ve ever had before as Alabama Baptists, but consistently across the board we have a smaller ‘market share’ than before,” Madison said. “Church planting is one of the most effective tools for evangelism.” (ABSC)
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