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IRVING—The closing session of the Southern Baptists of Texas Convention’s annual meeting, Nov.14-15 at the Irving Convention Center, will include a call for Texas churches to help engage the estimated 3,600 unengaged people groups worldwide.
In August, the SBTC’s Executive Board voted to give $1 million in surplus funds for international missions through the annual Lottie Moon Christmas Offering. During that meeting, the board also called on Southern Baptist churches in Texas to engage 1,000 of the 3,600 unreached groups.
That gift followed International Mission Board President Tom Elliff’s call last summer for Southern Baptist churches to actively participate with the IMB in helping reach the world’s unreached peoples.
Elliff will speak to SBTC messengers on Nov. 15 by video streaming. Messengers will also hear from missionaries and from SBTC President Byron McWilliams of Odessa and Executive Board Chairman John Meador of Euless.
Those attending will find in each chair that night an IMB Embrace commitment card with information about engaging an unengaged people, said Chad Vandiver, SBTC missions associate.
“Once we receive their commitment we will give them the Next Step commitment card and we will be available to talk with them about future training opportunities and how we can equip and empower them to embrace and reach an unreached people group,” Vandiver explained.
The commitment involves praying for a particular group, but it is much more than prayer, he emphasized.
Vandiver said the term “adopt” has been used to describe Elliff’s call to churches, but the IMB has chosen “embrace” as the operative word.
“Embrace is a stronger word than adopt. Embrace in this sense means doing whatever it takes to reach an unreached people group,” Vandiver said.
At the first IMB Embrace training conference in September, Elliff told attendees these unreached peoples “are in some of the absolute hardest places in the world. As far as we know there is no ongoing, deliberate strategy involving boots on the ground that are doing these three things—evangelizing, discipling and planting a reproducing church.”
The IMB missionary staff of 5,000 can't reach all 3,600 all of the unengaged people groups by themselves, Elliff said, according to a Baptist Press report.
“It's not so much us asking you to be our partner in this … but actually it's about us saying that we want to be your partner,” Elliff said. “It's going to take us all to reach the ends of the earth.”
In addition to the annual meeting call to churches, a second Embrace equipping conference for churches is scheduled from 8 a.m. – 4 p.m. Oct. 27 at Hillcrest Baptist Church in Cedar Hill. For more information, visit call2embrace.org.
