For Becky King, it was a refocusing — a change of mindset.
“Right where we are, right now, every day we have a calling to make the gospel known,” said King, a member of Liberty Baptist Church, Chelsea. “It starts at home with my children, and it bleeds over into every other aspect of my life. Every day I am on mission, right where I am.”
King and about 850 other Alabamians joined a sold-out crowd of more than 13,000 from all 50 states and four Canadian provinces Aug. 3–4 for the Send North America Conference in Nashville, an event focused on equipping everyday Christians to live out their faith in every area of their lives.
Presented for the first time in partnership by the North American Mission Board (NAMB) and the International Mission Board (IMB), the conference gathered church members and leaders for two days of missions-focused teaching, worship and practical application for the sake of spreading the gospel to our neighborhoods and the nations.
David Platt, IMB president, emphasized to the crowd at the closing session that the call to missions is not for an extraordinary, exclusive group of people, but it is an invitation from the sovereign God of heaven for all Christians.
He implored every person present to join his or her life with God so it counts for the greatest purpose in all the world: for the glory of God’s name and for the salvation of men, women and children.
“Do you realize that the sovereign God of the universe has reached down with His hand of mercy into your life?” Platt said. “He’s taken and pursued you — He loves you so much He sent His Son to die for you — and He wants the best for you. He wants a relationship with you where you trust Him, where you enjoy Him, where you experience reward with Him every single day … and where your life joined with Him counts for the greatest purpose in all the world. This is the invitation that lies before you.”
Church planting
Other speakers during the main session included J.D. Greear, pastor of Summit Church, Raleigh, North Carolina, who discussed his congregation’s vision to plant 1,000 churches in its generation. He shared his personal journey to embrace Summit’s vision of being a sending church and challenged church planters and conference participants to reach outside church walls.
“Jesus’ promises about the greatness of the Church were always tied to sending. He always focused on leaders being raised up and sent out, not an audience being gathered in and counted,” Greear said.
A dozen breakout sessions at three venues also presented participants with topics on living missions in everyday life.
Jamey Pruett, pastor of Gilliam Springs Baptist Church, Arab, said NAMB should be commended for partnering with IMB to put on the event.
“It was a very healthy thing to bring Southern Baptists together to focus on missions. The Great Commission has always united, excited and energized us,” Pruett said. “Focusing on those things — Jesus saves, the Great Commission, living a missional lifestyle — made for a wonderful conference.”
Also during the conference, Russell Moore, president of the Ethics & Religious Liberty Commission, shared a message before moderating a public forum that included conversations with presidential candidates Sen. Marco Rubio and Gov. Jeb Bush.
The candidates were invited to be interviewed by Moore at the conference along with the other leading candidates from each major party who were polling at 10 percent or higher in the Real Clear Politics national average up to one month before the event.
‘Duties as citizens’
Moore faced some criticism for bringing politics into the conference, but he defended the move by explaining that “just as the gospel shapes us into the kind of people we are to be in our workplaces and in our families, the gospel ought to shape our consciences to carry out our duties as citizens.”
Christians’ mission includes both personal evangelism and public justice, he wrote at russellmoore.com.
“That’s why we’re having this conversation at a missions conference,” he wrote. “We seek to engage our culture, and here have the opportunity to engage some of those who seek to lead our country regardless of where they fall on a religious or political spectrum.”
(TAB, NAMB)
For complete coverage of the conference, visit namb.net/send2015.
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