Pressley calls for ‘impact players’

Clint Pressley, pastor of Dauphin Way Baptist Church, Mobile, in Mobile Baptist Association, challenged messengers attending the Alabama Baptist State Convention annual meeting to be  “impact players.”
   
Preaching from Nahum 1:1–7, Pressley provided the theme interpretation — Intentional Evangelism — during the Wednesday morning session.
   
“Nahum is a man who is an impact player,” he said. But Pressley also noted that Nahum is “a nobody.” “Rising out of the sea of unanimity, Nahum came to the table with a message on his heart,” he said. “He is a man who is just a man, but he becomes an impact player. When we think of Intentional Evangelism, God is seeking people, like me and you, that will rise to make an impact.”
   
Pressley noted characteristics of an impact player:
   
• An impact player has a sense of burden.
   
“Evangelism always comes out of a burden,” he said. “There will never be change in your church and your city until there is a burden on your heart. Could it be that we don’t see more things happening because so few people have a burden?
   
“In the Bible, God always moves when there is a sense of burden,” Pressley said. “If God is going to use me, I must cultivate a burden.”
   
• An impact player does something with the burden.
   
“An impact person is willing to stand up against the downward death spiral and preach with a burden,” he said. “It is one thing to have a burden but another thing to do something about it.”
   
• An impact player has complete and total trust in the Lord.
   
“Even in the face of overwhelming odds, there is thi    s great trust,” Pressley said. “God has called you. Don’t drop that burden, carry that burden.”
   
• An impact player points people to Jesus.
   
“Our friends, our family members, our people, our communities, our cities need to hear that there is hope,” he said. “In the name of Jesus, be an impact player.”