Baptist Missions Quotes

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The first Baptist missionary (and the first missionary from the United States) was the African-American George Liele, the Baptist pastor of the first African Church of Savannah, who was able to purchase his own freedom and then went to Kingston, Jamaica, in 1783 as a missionary to African slaves. By the time Carey left for India, Liele already had planted the African Baptist Church of Kingston with more than five hundred
Timothy Tennent (Invitation to World Missions: A Trinitarian Missiology for the Twenty-first Century (Invitation to Theological Studies Series))
I didn’t understand hell, partially because I didn’t believe any place could be hotter than Mississippi in August. But I understood feeling good. I did not feel good at Concord Missionary Baptist church. I felt good watching Grandmama and her friends love each other during Home Mission.
Kiese Laymon (Heavy)
Speaking about praying to our Father in Heaven, I once heard Joseph Smith remark, "Be plain and simple and ask for what you want, just like you would go to a neighbor and say, I want to borrow your horse to go to the mill." I heard him say to some elders going on missions, "Make short prayers and short sermons, and let mysteries alone. Preach nothing but repentance and baptism for the remission of sins, for that was all John the Baptist preached.
Mark L. McConkie (Remembering Joseph: Personal Recollections of Those Who Know the Prophet Joseph Smith)
We sincerely believe discipleship has become a frontier issue for the people of God at this time in history. And most commentators would agree that in sincerely seeking to appeal to the prevailing consumerist culture, the Western church has all but lost the art of discipleship.2 This causes, for instance, Southern Baptist prophet Reggie McNeal to conclude that “church culture in North America is a vestige of the original [Christian] movement, an institutional expression of religion that is in part a civil religion and in part a club where religious people can hang out with other people whose politics, worldview, and lifestyle match theirs.”3 If this is indeed the case, we should be clear this is not what the church is called to be, and is, in fact, a failure in discipleship.
Alan Hirsch (Untamed (Shapevine): Reactivating a Missional Form of Discipleship)
Europeans had highly developed regional and national cultures and societies before they bolted on Protestantism. America, on the other hand, was half-created by Protestant extremists to be a Protestant society. American academics accept the idea of American exceptionalism in one of its meanings—that our peculiar founding circumstances shaped us. “The position of the Americans,” Tocqueville wrote in Democracy in America, “is…quite exceptional,” by which he meant the Puritanism, the commercialism, the freedom of religion, the individualism, “a thousand special causes.” The professoriate rejects exceptionalism in today’s right-wing sense, that the United States is superior to all other nations, with a God-given mission. And they also resist the third meaning, the idea that a law of human behavior doesn’t apply here—scholars of religion insist that explanations of religious behavior must be universal. The latest scholarly consensus about America’s exceptional religiosity is an economic theory. Because all forms of religion are products in a marketplace, they say, our exceptional free marketism has produced more supply and therefore generated more demand. Along with universal human needs for physical sustenance and security, there’s also such a need for existential explanations, for why and how the world came to be. Sellers of religion emerge offering explanations. From the start, religions tended to be state monopolies—as they were in the colonies, the Puritans in Massachusetts and the Church of England in the South. After that original American duopoly was dismantled and the government prohibited official churches, religious entrepreneurs rushed into the market, Methodists and Baptists and Mormons and all the others. European countries, meanwhile, kept their state-subsidized religions, Protestant or Catholic—and so in an economic sense those churches became lazy monopolies.*10 In America, according to the market theorists, each religion competes with all the others to acquire and keep customers. Americans, presented with all this fantastic choice, can’t resist buying. We’re so religious for the same reason we’re so fat.
Kurt Andersen (Fantasyland: How America Went Haywire: A 500-Year History)
In 1835 English Baptists Francis Cox and James Hoby, who had worked with William Wilberforce to abolish slavery in the British Empire, came to the United States “to urge Baptists to abandon slavery. This visit and subsequent correspondence tended to polarize Baptists.”26 They encouraged Christian activism in Northern abolitionist groups. In 1849 the American Baptist Anti- Slavery Convention was formed in New York and launched a polemic attack on the institution of slavery, calling Southern Baptists to repent in the strongest terms. They urged that Baptist mission agencies be cleansed of “any taint of slavery and condemned slavery in militant terms,” and they called on Southern Baptists to “confess before heaven and earth the sinfulness of holding slaves; admit it to be not only a misfortune, but a crime.” warning that “if Baptists in the South ignored such warnings and persisted in the practice of slavery, ‘we cannot and dare not recognize you as consistent brethren in Christ.
Steven Dundas
When I think of overcoming obstacles, I’m reminded of one our West Coast Baptist College graduates, Nathan Kinoshita, missionary to Tokyo, Japan. When Nathan and his wife, Ruth, went to Tokyo to begin church planting, the city was credited as the most expensive city in the world in which to live. It bumps up and down on the list (as of this writing, it is the sixth most expensive city), but it remains high. The expense not only impacted their personal living needs (for $2,500 per month, they rent a five hundred-square-foot apartment for their family of five), but it impacted their ministry needs as well. To rent even a small building in which to hold services for three hours each Sunday costs them $7,000 per month. On top of that, Japan is not known as a mission field that is particularly responsive to the gospel. So the Kinoshitas were looking at months, possibly years, before a self-supporting church would be established. Many people would have said, “It can’t be done. It’s too expensive. There are too many obstacles. The people don’t want to hear anyway.” I’m thankful Nathan Kinoshita didn’t say that. He found an apartment for his family and rolled up his sleeves and went to work sharing the gospel. Today, a mere five and a half years later, the City Baptist Church of Tokyo is strong, healthy, and growing. Obstacles are what we see when we take our eyes off the goal. Passion is what we need to overcome the obstacles.
Paul Chappell (Out of Commission: Getting Every Christian Back to the Great Commission)
If Southern Baptist churches sent just 1 percent of their members to reach the nations and peoples of the world, instead of five thousand there would be 160,000 missionaries (according to our reported membership of sixteen million in 2009). The support should not be a problem—not financially, logistically, or in human resources. Could not 99 percent of the church adequately support the 1 percent sent to the nations to fulfill the mission of God?
Ed Stetzer (Spiritual Warfare and Missions)
To this day, the vast majority of black Christians are Baptists, and this is not a coincidence. White Baptists proved most aggressive in gospel missions to slaves. Their spiritual dynamism, populism, and extemporary preaching attracted large numbers of Africans in the early United States.
Douglas A. Sweeney (The American Evangelical Story: A History of the Movement)
The means Carey initiated for global outreach, the mission society, is a core strategy for Baptists around the world. Much good has come from using this method, but perhaps at the expense of keeping all believers in local churches lashed to the burden of global mission responsibility. The proliferation of mission societies on every continent, in almost every country and for every conceivable purpose, has diversified missionary outreach. It has also, perhaps to the detriment of Baptist churches, diluted efforts by expending so much money on administration, promotion, fundraising, and management of thousands of well-meaning organizations, rather than investing more resources directly in the field.
Allen Yen (Expect Great Things, Attempt Great Things: William Carey and Adoniram Judson, Missionary Pioneers (Studies in World Christianity))
He is, for instance, the only evangelist who has John the Baptist spell out in practical terms what it means to “bear fruits that befit repentance” (3:8), and he does this in terms of economic relations (3:10-14).
David J. Bosch (Transforming Mission: Paradigm Shifts in Theology of Mission)
He is, for instance, the only evangelist who has John the Baptist spell out in practical terms what it means to “bear fruits that befit repentance” (3:8), and he does this in terms of economic relations (3:10-14). The term ptochos (“poor”) occurs ten times in Luke, compared to five times each in Mark and Matthew.4 Not only the word ptochos, but also other terms referring to want and need abound in Luke. The same is true of terms referring to wealth, such as plousios (“rich”) and hyparchonta (“possessions”) (cf Bergquist 1986:4f). “If we did not have Luke,” comments Schottroff and Stegemann (1986:67), “we would probably have lost an important, if not the most important, part of the earliest Christian tradition and its intense preoccupation with the figure and message of Jesus as the hope of the poor.” Mazamisa (1987:99) summarizes, [Luke's] concern is with the social issues he writes about: with the demons and evil forces in first century society which deprived women, men and children of dignity and selfhood, of sight and voice and bread, and sought to control their lives for private gain; with the people's own selfishness and servility; and with the promises and possibilities of the poor and the outcasts.
David J. Bosch (Transforming Mission: Paradigm Shifts in Theology of Mission)
The same happens in Luke 7:22f (par Mt 11:5f). In his reply to John the Baptist Jesus again, as he did in 4:18f, “splices” different passages from Isaiah (in this case Is 35:5f, 29:18f, and 61:1). All three of these passages contain, in one form or another, references to divine vengeance (35:4; 29:20; 61:2), but again Jesus omits any references to it. This can hardly be unintentional, moreso because of the added remark, “And blessed is he who takes no offense at me” (Lk 7:23). In other words: Blessed is everyone who does not take offense at the fact that the era of salvation differs from what he or she has expected, that God's compassion on the poor, the outcast and the stranger—even on Israel's enemies—has superseded divine vengeance!
David J. Bosch (Transforming Mission: Paradigm Shifts in Theology of Mission)
On my first trip to Ghana, my long-time colleague Jude Hama of Scripture Union decided to give me the broadest exposure possible to the movements of the church in his country. We visited with Methodist bishops, Baptist leaders and Pentecostal church leaders whose churches were sending missionaries all over the world. We visited Presbyterians, Anglicans and charismatics. This last church was the most fascinating. The preacher, a man who weighed at least three hundred pounds (although he was only five feet, six inches tall), testified that his physical size was evidence of God's poured-out blessings. As the service progressed, people came and laid their money on the stairs leading up to the stage. At several points, beautifully dressed ladies carrying baskets on their heads would collect the money. And the process would then repeat, and more people would lay more money on the stairs. Jude explained, "These people have a prayer request: a job, an illness, a desire to marry, etc. The money is their `love offering' and is designed to let God know that they are serious about their request." Seed faith expressed in Ghana dollars. Jude went on: "You see, Paul, you in America concentrate on the God of love. But here we want the God of power. When you live in poverty or with some incurable affliction or some injustice, you don't want to feel loved. You want God's power to make you prosper, or to make you healthy or to make you free. And they have been taught and they believe that money is the way to release the power.
Paul Borthwick (Western Christians in Global Mission: What's the Role of the North American Church?)
Occasionally you will read or hear statements that Carey was the first missionary of the modern period or that he was the first Protestant or even the first Baptist missionary. However, none of these statements are true.
Timothy Tennent (Invitation to World Missions: A Trinitarian Missiology for the Twenty-first Century (Invitation to Theological Studies Series))
1845, when the American Baptist Foreign Mission Society declared that any slave owner would be disqualified from consideration for missionary service, Baptist churches in the South seceded and formed the Southern Baptist Convention so that members would not have to choose between their slaves and their calling to be missionaries.
Robert P. Jones (The End of White Christian America (Award-Winning History))
At the end, he insists in both cases on secrecy. He’s reached the point where it’s vital that word doesn’t leak out. If his kingdom-mission is becoming more explicitly a Messiah-mission, this really is dangerous. He must do what he has to do swiftly and secretly. In between, both stories tell of a two-stage process of illumination. The blind man sees people, but they look like trees walking about; the crowds see Jesus, but they think he’s just a prophet. (If you want to get a good picture of how Jesus appeared to his contemporaries, forget ‘gentle Jesus, meek and mild’ and read the stories of John the Baptist, Elijah and the other great prophets: fearless men of God who spoke out against evil and injustice, and brought hope to God’s puzzled and suffering people.) Then, as it were with a second touch, Jesus faces the disciples themselves with the question. Now at last their eyes are opened. They have understood about the loaves, and all the other signs. ‘You’re the Messiah!’ Peter speaks for them all. It’s vital for us to be clear at this point. Calling Jesus ‘Messiah’ doesn’t mean calling him ‘divine’, let alone ‘the second person of the Trinity’. Mark believes Jesus was and is divine, and will eventually show us why; but this moment in the gospel story is about something else. It’s about the politically dangerous and theologically risky claim that Jesus is the true King of Israel, the final heir to the throne of David, the one before whom Herod Antipas and all other would-be Jewish princelings are just shabby little impostors. The disciples weren’t expecting a divine redeemer; they were longing for a king. And they thought they’d found one. Nor was it only Herod who might be suspicious. In Jesus’ day there was a prominent temple in Caesarea Philippi to the newest pagan ‘god’ – the Roman Emperor himself. A Messiah announcing God’s kingdom was a challenge to Rome itself. As
N.T. Wright (Mark for Everyone (The New Testament for Everyone))
The Faith of Jimmy Carter Carter grew up in the Southern Baptist Church that had dominated many parts of the South since the Civil War. As a child, he regularly attended Sunday school, worship services, and the Royal Ambassadors, an organization for young boys that focused on missions, at the Baptist church in Plains, Georgia. At age eleven, Carter publicly professed his faith in Jesus Christ as his personal Savior and Lord, was baptized, and joined the church. Thereafter, he participated faithfully in the Baptist Young People’s Union. Carter’s religious convictions and social attitudes were strongly shaped by his mother, Lillian. In 1958, Carter was ordained as a deacon, the governing office in Southern Baptist congregations, and he ushered, led public prayers, and preached lay sermons at his home church. His failure to win the Democratic nomination for governor in 1966 prompted Carter to reassess his faith. Challenged by a sermon entitled ‘‘If You Were Arrested for Being a Christian, Would There Be Enough Evidence to Convict You?’’ and conversations with his sister, evangelist Ruth Carter Stapleton, he vowed to make serving Christ and others his primary aim. During the 1966 governor’s race, he had spent sixteen to eighteen hours a day trying to convince Georgians to vote for him. ‘‘The comparison struck me,’’ Carter wrote, ‘‘300,000 visits for myself in three months, and 140 visits for God [to witness to others] in fourteen years!’’ Carter soon experienced a more intimate relationship with Christ and inner peace. He read the Bible ‘‘with new interest’’ and concluded that he had been a Pharisee. He went on witnessing missions, attended several religious conferences, and oversaw the showing of a Billy Graham film in Americus, Georgia.
Gary Scott Smith (Faith and the Presidency From George Washington to George W. Bush)
In Ant. 18.116–119, Josephus makes no mention of the setting of John’s mission, saying only that John was executed at Machaerus. Herod’s fortress-palace, the ruins of which still stand, was situated in Peraea. It was less than fourteen kilometres south east of the Jordan River and so it comes within the general area suggested by the
Josephine Wilkinson (John the Baptist: A Life and Death)
As my friend Joel Lindsey has written, “A gospel-centered church is so because the gospel is the engine that propels its mission. . . . The gospel is the primary lens through which to view the world and the people and things in it.”5 In other words, the gospel isn’t just a fad or style you lay over your philosophy of ministry—something traditional, something Baptist, something Reformed—as if “gospel-centrality” were an Instagram filter for your church.
Jared C. Wilson (The Gospel-Driven Church: Uniting Church Growth Dreams with the Metrics of Grace)
In fact, Zinn’s radicalism was not a good fit for Spelman College, where he must have stood out like a sore thumb. Spelman was a conservative Christian school that had been founded in 1881 by eleven ex-slaves who met in Friendship Baptist Church, wanting to read the Bible.34 It became Atlanta Baptist Female Seminary and then, in 1924, Spelman College. Karen Vanlandingham in her 1985 master’s thesis, “In Pursuit of a Changing Dream: Spelman College Students and the Civil Rights Movement, 1955–1962,” explains that the “religious tradition inherent in Spelman’s founding endured as a part of the school’s educational philosophy.” The 1958–1959 college catalogue asserted, “Spelman College is emphatically Christian. The attitude toward life exemplified by the life and teachings of Jesus is the ideal which governs the institution.”35 College life there included mandatory daily chapel attendance and adherence to a strict curfew and dress code. Howard Zinn, however, felt it was his mission and his right to change the college. In the August 6, 1960, Nation, he observed: “ ‘You can always tell a Spelman girl,’ ” alumni and friends of the college have boasted for years. The ‘Spelman girl’ walked gracefully, talked properly, went to church every Sunday, poured tea elegantly and, in general, had all the attributes of the product of a fine finishing school. If intellect and talent and social consciousness happened to develop also, they were, to an alarming extent, by-products.”36 Zinn set out to transform the “finishing school” into a “school for protest.
Mary Grabar (Debunking Howard Zinn: Exposing the Fake History That Turned a Generation against America)
I have a complicated spiritual history. Here's the short version: I was born into a Mass-going Roman Catholic family, but my parents left the church when I was in the fifth grade and joined a Southern Baptist church—yes, in Connecticut. I am an alumnus of Wheaton College—Billy Graham's alma mater in Illinois, not the Seven Sisters school in Massachusetts—and the summer between my junior and senior year of (Christian) high school, I spent a couple of months on a missions trip performing in whiteface as a mime-for-the-Lord on the streets of London's West End. Once I left home for Wheaton, I ended up worshiping variously (and when I could haul my lazy tuckus out of bed) at the nondenominational Bible church next to the college, a Christian hippie commune in inner-city Chicago left over from the Jesus Freak movement of the 1960s, and an artsy-fartsy suburban Episcopal parish that ended up splitting over same-sex issues. My husband of more than a decade likes to describe himself as a “collapsed Catholic,” and for more than twenty-five years, I have been a born-again Christian. Groan, I know. But there's really no better term in the current popular lexicon to describe my seminal spiritual experience. It happened in the summer of 1980 when I was about to turn ten years old. My parents had both had born-again experiences themselves about six months earlier, shortly before our family left the Catholic church—much to the shock and dismay of the rest of our extended Irish and/or Italian Catholic family—and started worshiping in a rented public grade school gymnasium with the Southern Baptists. My mother had told me all about what she'd experienced with God and how I needed to give my heart to Jesus so I could spend eternity with him in heaven and not frying in hell. I was an intellectually stubborn and precocious child, so I didn't just kneel down with her and pray the first time she told me about what was going on with her and Daddy and Jesus. If something similar was going to happen to me, it was going to happen in my own sweet time. A few months into our family's new spiritual adventure, after hearing many lectures from Mom and sitting through any number of sermons at the Baptist church—each ending with an altar call and an invitation to make Jesus the Lord of my life—I got up from bed late one Sunday night and went downstairs to the den where my mother was watching television. I couldn't sleep, which was unusual for me as a child. I was a champion snoozer. In hindsight I realize something must have been troubling my spirit. Mom went into the kitchen for a cup of tea and left me alone with the television, which she had tuned to a church service. I don't remember exactly what the preacher said in his impassioned, sweaty sermon, but I do recall three things crystal clearly: The preacher was Jimmy Swaggart; he gave an altar call, inviting the folks in the congregation in front of him and at home in TV land to pray a simple prayer asking Jesus to come into their hearts; and that I prayed that prayer then and there, alone in the den in front of the idiot box. Seriously. That is precisely how I got “saved.” Alone. Watching Jimmy Swaggart on late-night TV. I also spent a painful vacation with my family one summer at Jim and Tammy Faye Bakker's Heritage USA Christian theme park in South Carolina. But that's a whole other book…
Cathleen Falsani (Sin Boldly: A Field Guide for Grace)