Parent told freeway driving more unsafe than missions

SWBTS photo by Gregory Tomlin

KCBI Christian Radio host Johanna Fisher addresses a 100-member audience at SWBTS in Fort Worth, Texas, May 11, on hand to hear seminary President Paige Patterson discuss "Dying for the faith: Is the Great Commission in jeopardy?"

FORT WORTH, Texas (BP)--The American church will suffer if it doesn’t begin directing more of its resources to fulfilling the Great Commission, Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary President Paige Patterson said during a live broadcast from the seminary’s Fort Worth, Texas, campus May 11.

Patterson told KCBI Christian Radio host Johanna Fisher during the one-hour program that the American church had fulfilled the Great Commission “splendidly” but at the same time had been “tragically awful.”

About 100 people were on hand for the live broadcast from the seminary’s Ralph M. Smith Leadership Development Complex on the topic, "Dying for the faith: Is the Great Commission in jeopardy?"

“The church has been very generous and great numbers of people have gone ... but it is always wrong and will never be right that 95 percent of the world’s resources are spent on 5 percent of the world’s population,” Patterson said. The church’s failure to expend the appropriate resources on international evangelism is “something for which God will judge us,” Patterson said.

Fisher asked Patterson if many Christians were not fulfilling the Great Commission because of what had happened to “new millennium martyrs” like the seven Southern Baptist personnel killed in Yemen, Iraq and the Philippines.

“God doesn’t make any wimps,” Patterson replied. “The worst thing that can happen is for a Christian to be engulfed by fear. Fear is the work of the devil. Of the many ways to die, I can’t think of any better way to die than to give one’s life for Christ.”

One caller to the program asked if parents should be concerned about sending their children on international mission trips. Parents who have such fears should not allow their children to drive on freeways or visit the nation’s capital, Patterson said, noting that Washington, D.C., has one of the highest murder rates in the country.

“It is safer in Iraq and Afghanistan,” Patterson said. “The most dangerous thing in the world is to be out of God’s will.” The Lord provides a “double protection” for those who serve in dangerous places overseas, he said.

“There is no higher calling than to go to people who have not heard the Gospel,” Patterson said. Christians make an investment in eternity by going, he said.