The Call for Missions Education

Over the last several weeks many state conventions have taken place across the SBC.  As I have read testimonials from many of my friends, a number of questions have been raised regarding those conventions.  Some have wondered how to encourage younger pastors to participate, others want to know how to enhance brand loyalty to the convention, and others struggle with helping promote the mission of the Gospel across their state conventions.  These are all good and valid questions that need to be answered. 
In Wyoming, we were visited by our regular representative from the Executive Board of the SBC and in his words came the most frightening message we could have heard.  Sadly, less than 50% of churches that are affliated with the Southern Baptist Convention give at least 2% to missions in a year.  Even more shocking is that 25% of churches that claim to be Southern Baptist gave nothing to missions.  These statistics offered up symptoms of a dreaded disease.  We have lost our missions focus as a convention.
We may still provide the largest fully funded missions organization in the history of the world, but the missions emphasis that built it has gone.  We have become an inwardly focused convention that has forgotten our call to missions and we have become ignorant of the methods that are available to us for the purpose of fulfilling that call.  So the question that must be answered going forward is not "How do we make younger pastors feel that their voice is important?"  The question is how do we return to our missional roots as a convention?
This cannot be done from the top down.  The SBC is not a denomination.  We are a convention of independant Baptist churches who have chosen to associate together freely for the purpose of missions and education.  As a result, we cannot be made to be missional by our leaders.  Rather we must address this at the local level.  We must address these concerns as local churches seeking to fulfill our global charge.
The best means of turning this tide is a return to Missions Education in our churches.  Over the last 10 years there has been a removal of Royal Ambassadors, Girls in Action, Acteens, and Challengers education programs from our Southern Baptist Churches.  Sadly, this has led to a generation of young pastors and church leaders that have no clear understanding of the Cooperative Program or of missions outside of their local church.  However, with the dismissal of these education programs, we have also lost advocates for missions in the pew as parents who were touched and influenced by these ministries in the lives of their children are no longer being touched by missions education either. 
The results cannot be ignored.  The continued decline of missions education has now created a decline in missions support and activity.  The failure to educate our children has now resulted in an adult membership that is largely uninformed.  The unwillingness to teach missions to our children has now produced pastors who have no understanding of cooperative missions involvement. 
If we are to turn this tide, then we as local church pastors must be willing to change.  We must return to missions education within our churches.  We must commit to teach our children and our adults the value of missions.  We must remember that as we educate our children about missions, we educate our future about missions.  We must remember that as we educate our children about missions, we educate future missionaries about the need for missions.  We must remember that as we educate our children about missions, we instill the values on which the Southern Baptist Convention was founded upon and provide the missional foundation for the future of the Southern Baptist Convention.
Pastors please return to missions education within your church.  Recruit those with a heart for missions to begin sharing and teaching missions to the children of your church.  The numbers don't lie.  The future work of Southern Baptist missions depend on it.
God Bless