Van Nestie
According to the latest reports, more than 12 percent of Tennessee Baptist churches are without a pastor. That is about 400 churches. Among the pastors we do have, the average age is increasing dramatically because fewer and fewer young men are entering the ministry, and men who are ready to retire must be pressed back into service.
Our rural churches are particularly hard hit. Many of the people of God are shepherdless at a time when there are four million lost people in Tennessee.
I am most accustomed to thinking of international missions when I read Matthew 9:35-38, but it is also true of Tennessee. “And Jesus went throughout all the cities and villages, teaching in their synagogues and proclaiming the gospel of the kingdom and healing every disease and every affliction.
“When he saw the crowds, he had compassion for them, because they were harassed and helpless, like sheep without a shepherd. Then he said to his disciples, “The harvest is plentiful, but the laborers are few; therefore pray earnestly to the Lord of the harvest to send out laborers into his harvest.”
And, at this moment, Ford Motor Company’s Blue Oval City is being built in West Tennessee bringing a historic influx of people and money. Will it be met with spiritual renewal as well?
As part of the Blue Oval Partnership, the Tennessee Baptist Mission Board hopes to plant 40 new churches in the next 10 years within a seven-county radius. So, as we are about to receive a flood of new people, our churches are in decline. How will we reach them?
In addition to meeting the needs right in front of us, consider the implications for our broader missionary enterprise. We Southern Baptists have an amazing missionary work across North America and around the globe, but have you considered our spiritual supply line?
Almost daily in the U.S., we are being reminded of the importance of protecting our economic supply lines. The majority of Southern Baptist missionaries, church planters and mission funding comes from Tennessee and other portions of the Bible Belt.
Over 90 percent of all Cooperative Program giving comes from the Southeastern states of the U.S. Just under 90% of all the Annie Armstrong gifts and about 75% of IMB missionaries come from these states.
These facts don’t lessen the contribution of areas of the U.S. where Southern Baptist work is newer, but the Bible Belt largely funds and supplies our mission efforts.
The lack of pastors in our area combined with the pressure on churches to accommodate the world and compromise biblical truth threatens not just our area but our entire mission endeavor around the world.
In 1793, William Carey, the father of Protestant missions and a Baptist, was sent to India. Andrew Fuller describing the occasion said the sentiment was Carey saying to the gathered ministers, “I will go down into the pit, if you will hold the ropes.”
We, Southern Baptists, have lowered a significant enterprise into the dark and dying world, but the folks who have been holding the rope are dying off, and we are not replacing them at a sufficient rate.
We are in danger of losing hold of the rope and no longer being able to support our mission endeavors. We do not have the option to remain where we are. We must rise up or go under.
We need all believers to be faithful witnesses, involved servants, and sacrificial givers. And we need to see God raise up a new generation of pastors.
We must do all we can, but we must also realize that we are radically dependent on a move of God.
Times of great need, of desperation, are times of opportunity, because we rarely seek God fully until we are desperate.
My prayer is that we might see the challenge of our day for all that it is, and that this might shake us from our stupor so that we return to a hearty faith calling down the blessing of God that we might reach our state and continue to raise up generations to hold the rope for mission enterprises around the world. May it be so. B&R