A Family of Baptist Congregations in the Midlands of South Carolina
Our One Priority: Starting and Strengthening Churches to Serve as Vital and Vibrant Missional Communities.
Launching 2022 with Columbia Metro:
Mission Local
Our Lord’s Great Commission calls for us to make disciples locally, regionally, nationally, and globally. It is a wonderful mission given to us. It is one we engage in until all hear, and we hope receive Jesus Christ as their Lord and Savior. All my life I have heard – in numerous ways – greater emphasis placed on how sacrificial it is for people to go as missionaries globally and nationally than regionally and locally. I get it. The billions of people who do not know Jesus as their Savior do not live nearby.
This is one of those situations in life where we must highlight the word “AND.” No one intends a competition between locally, regionally, nationally, and globally. We need to tell the Good News and be positive and proactive examples of Christ-like love everywhere.
Yet, the base of people and congregations who are going must develop missional capacity regionally and locally. This means we need a large number of vital and vibrant congregations locally – in a place like the Columbia metropolitan areas – where people are learning innovative Christian ministry before they go long-term or short-term to national and global places as the presence of Christ for people who have not heard.
I suggest that is not happening locally among the 100 congregations of our association compared to the depth and breadth it could potentially take place. We have mission fields in our associational fellowship areas going uncultivated. We have struggling congregations seeking to provide a Christian witness in tough places without sufficient resources to do so and others pretending these under-resourced congregations do not exist. We have people groups and missions causes either ignored or unknown to our congregations.
Who is at fault for this? We all are. Who can do something about this? We all can.
Beginning this week in our CMBA Newsletter we will be focusing for the next five months on Columbia Metro: Mission Local. We will deal with strategic concepts for congregations, the opportunities available in our local mission field, and pathways for involvement. Each week in this One Priority Briefing we will highlight aspects of our local mission.
A question for this week: Who in your congregation has the greatest passion for local missional engagement?
Wednesday Word from George Bullard
for January 26, 2022
Check out the Wednesday Word video from George Bullard by clicking here. This week George covers his church tour of the churches in Fairfield County, the launching of an emphasis on Columbia Metro: Mission Local, the Executive Director search process, and the Baptist Collegiate Ministries need for more congregations to sponsor their meals for students.
Our One Priority Briefing and the Our One Priority Briefing Online Gathering are made possible by the financial gifts of the member and network connection congregations of the Columbia Metro Baptist Association at www.ColumbiaMetro.org, CMBA@ColumbiaMetro.org, or 803.619.7110. To donate to CMBA go to https://www.columbiametro.org/donate/. Congregations can make their general contributions through this link. Congregations, missions groups and individuals can designate gifts to the Congregational Grant Fund, hunger ministry, disaster response, and Baptist Collegiate Ministry.