Cuban Baptists seem to be leading the way for the rest of the Church as a church planting movement is sweeping across the Caribbean island country.
Southern Baptist Convention (SBC) President Ronnie Floyd believes the same movement could happen in the United States if Southern Baptists and other United States believers commit themselves to “extraordinary prayer for the next Great Awakening.”
“There has never been any great movement of God … that was not first preceded by extraordinary prayer of God’s people. And we need a mighty spiritual awakening in our nation,” said Floyd, who in 2014 began an ongoing call to Southern Baptists to pray for a spiritual awakening that could have a global impact.
While visiting Cuba for the first time in March, Floyd saw firsthand the fruits of a spiritual awakening that began in the nation more than two decades ago. “It’s obvious that there has been a mighty move of God here. … And prayer preceded this movement,” said Floyd, pastor of Cross Church, Springdale, Ark.
At the invitation of the International Mission Board (IMB), Floyd traveled to Cuba with three other Southern Baptist pastors and a team of IMB leaders and missionaries to attend a missions congress of the Eastern Cuba Baptist Convention at First Baptist Church, Bayamo, Cuba.
Floyd said he was moved by the testimonies of several Cuban Baptists who soon will go out as international missionaries, the first to be sent by missions boards of the Eastern Convention and the Western Cuba Baptist Convention.
The first Cuban Baptist missionaries expected to go — possibly as early as May — are two couples and a single woman who will work with unreached people groups in South America, pending the granting of visas from their host countries, said Kurt Urbanek, IMB strategy leader for Cuba. One of these couples will help take the gospel to Afro-Ecuadorians in Ecuador, working with IMB missionaries Johnny and Donna Maust.
“Cuban Baptists have prayed to be able to send their own international missionaries for 54 years,” said Urbanek, author of “Cuba’s Great Awakening: Church Planting Movement in Cuba.”
Now, because of recent changes in Cuban law, Cubans are able to travel outside of the country for two years without an exit visa.
During the missions congress, more than 200 additional Cuban Baptists committed their lives to global missions service, Urbanek said. At least 150 of them made public commitments after Floyd preached on Acts 1:8 at the close of the conference. Seeing that response was “one of the most powerful moments God has ever given me in ministry,” Floyd said.
The believers who made commitments will join more than 200 other Cuban Baptist missionary candidates waiting to receive further training, make connections with strategic overseas missions projects and find adequate finances to go, Urbanek said.
Urban 20/20
Daniel Gonzalez — one of three Cuban Baptist pastors who spoke during the 2014 SBC annual meeting in Baltimore, Md., — reported on “Urban 20/20,” a plan for “saturation church planting” in the 20 most populated cities in Cuba by the year 2020.
So far most of Cuba’s church planting movement has occurred in rural areas, but about 50 percent of the country’s population lives in these urban centers, Urbanek noted.
Grant Ethridge joined Floyd on the trip. Ethridge, president of the Southern Baptist Conservatives of Virginia and pastor of Liberty Baptist Church, Hampton, Va., said no words could prepare him to see Cuba’s spiritual awakening up close.
“When we got into the [first worship service],” Ethridge said, “the energy, the joy, the presence of the Lord was in that place. … They want [missions] to happen in Cuba and from Cuba to the nations.”
(BP)
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