Join God, don’t be ashamed of the Gospel, Rankin urges

INDIANAPOLIS (BP)—When God is moving in great power all around the world and others are giving their lives to advance God’s Kingdom, Southern Baptists must be found faithful to pray, give and go in obedience to Christ’s command, messengers were told during the evening session of the Southern Baptist Convention June 16.

For 10 years, God has been calling out record numbers of church members to serve as missionaries overseas, International Mission Board President Jerry Rankin told the assembly in the Indiana Convention Center. In 2003, Southern Baptist missionaries and their national Baptist partners reported an historic 510,000 baptisms and a near doubling of the number of churches started.

“Yet this has not been without cost,” Rankin said. “There are more and more places that do not welcome a missionary witness. Our personnel have become vulnerable, not simply due to their missionary witness but because they are Americans living in a hostile world.”

The four Southern Baptist workers who were killed in Iraq March 15—Larry and Jean Elliott, Karen Watson and David McDonnall—were willing to go in spite of the risk because of their conviction that Jesus alone is the answer to humanity’s spiritual need, he said.

“Amazingly, these tragic deaths have inspired others to follow in their steps, and their example calls us all to a greater sacrifice and obedience.”

Rankin introduced Carrie McDonnall, the fifth member of the team that was attacked that day. McDonnall’s husband died in the attack, and she was critically injured. She moved onto the stage with the help of a walker, her leg in a cast and her arm, hand and face visibly scarred.

After a sustained standing ovation, McDonnall thanked the audience for their prayers during the ordeal. She told the story of a teenager who heard about the attack and her critical injuries and asked her classmates to pray for McDonnall. Told by her teacher that her action was inappropriate, the student countered, “It’s the least I could do.”

“Make no mistake, David and I went to Iraq out of God’s call on our lives to see His name glorified among the nations,” McDonnall said. “That includes the hard and violent places.

“My Jesus bears scars on his body from the violence he endured. How could we sit back and say ‘I can’t go because it’s too hard,’ especially when the world is saying, ‘You just can’t do that’?

“Trust me, for my Jesus, it’s the least I could do.”

In spite of many barriers—from traditional religion to mountaintop isolation—God’s message of love is spreading from heart to heart, sometimes multiplying in an amazing fashion, a series of missionaries told the congregation.

A missionary who serves in South Asia explained that lost people in his country outnumber Christian missionaries nine million to 1, yet in 2003 more than 180,000 new believers were baptized—over 100,000 of whom were Muslims turning to faith in Jesus Christ.

People turn to Christ in great numbers even when it means suffering and death, Rankin told the crowd.

He introduced Tom Thurman, a retired missionary who served 33 years in South Asia, helping impoverished people with overwhelming needs though his family suffered from malaria and even leprosy.

Thurman and Rankin introduced “Abdullah,” whom Thurman had led to Christ as a young man. Beaten and left for dead by his own neighbors because of his commitment to Christ, the young man still persisted in sharing his testimony about new life in Christ. In time, every one of the 1,600 people in that village came to faith in Jesus.

“Abdullah,” whose name and identity was withheld for security reasons, told the audience that when Muslim people read what their holy book, the Quran, has to say about Jesus, they want to know more about Him. When they read the Bible, they recognize Jesus as the one God sent to set them free from the power of sin and death—and they turn to Christ.

Because of Abdullah’s witness, more than 400,000 people have been baptized and 9,700 churches and 500 Bible study groups have been started, Thurman said. The movement continues to grow.

Some, however, are hostile toward the Gospel, Abdullah said. Nine Christian evangelists have been murdered for their witness, including a boyhood friend who was the first person he won to Christ. One evangelist was stabbed to death when he answered a midnight knock on the door. Another was kidnapped after baptizing 25 people in broad daylight—and bled to death after being beaten and slashed with a knife.

Yet some of those involved in the killings have become Christians themselves, Abdullah said.

Like the Scripture says, God is doing a work among the nations that is hard to believe even when you hear the testimony firsthand, Rankin said.

“Missionaries and nationals like these are faithfully proclaiming the Gospel, being part of what God is doing around the world,” he said. “And God is challenging us to seize these unprecedented opportunities as His spirit is moving—to call out missionaries from our churches, to give more generously and sacrificially to send them out and support them, and to pray that God would use them in a mighty movement of His spirit.”

He closed with a prayer that Southern Baptists would rise to meet the challenge. “I pray that You would find us faithful, that we would continue to challenge our people and our churches to go, that we would join with these in volunteer projects to share the Gospel and the power of God with a world that is desperately searching,” he said.

“I pray that we, like Abdullah and his friends, would not be ashamed of the Gospel of Christ.”