In May of 1845, 327 delegates gathered at the First Baptist Church in Augusta, Ga., for what would be the first meeting of the Southern Baptist Convention. From May 8 until May 12, they deliberated, they prayed, and they planned. Though historical issues regarding slavery and divisions among Baptists swirled in the background, the spirit of that fledgling group and the decisions they made then still reverberate around the world for Kingdom advance today.
In many ways, we are who we are today because of the outcomes of that meeting. The first noteworthy decision was to function as a convention rather than a society. Southern Baptists found a way forward to fully embrace the autonomy of local churches and associational cooperation and responsibility.1 This equal, biblical emphasis on what appears to be contradictory ideas is one of the things that makes the SBC unique. In my opinion, no other denomination holds both better.
Second, they constituted this new denomination to exist for “one sacred purpose,” the propagation of the Gospel around the world. The preamble of the original constitution reads, “We, the delegates from Missionary Societies, Churches, and other religious bodies of the Baptist Denomination, in various parts of the United States, met in Convention, in the city of Augusta, Georgia, for the purpose of carrying into effect the benevolent intentions of our constituents, by organizing a plan for eliciting, combining and directing the energies of the whole denomination in one sacred effort, for the propagation of the Gospel …”.2
Third, and perhaps even more significant, in that very same meeting on the afternoon of May 10, they voted to create the Foreign Mission Board (FMB) and Domestic Mission Board. By September of the same year, the FMB met and appointed its first two missionaries, Samuel Clopton and George Pearcy, to go to China. In short, the SBC was founded with a missionary DNA. The issue of who could be a missionary is what brought them together in Augusta, but the deliberation to form a denomination that would be confessionally Baptist and Great Commission-oriented is what resulted.
Now, as we look back through the corridors of time, we can see a history of praying, giving, and going to the ends of the earth. According to the International Mission Board (formerly FMB), there have been almost 25,000 missionaries sent by Southern Baptists to 185 different countries since Clopton and Pearcy went to China.3 Additionally, in 1918, the Women’s Missionary Union of the SBC established the annual Christmas offering for foreign missions and, at the behest of Annie Armstrong, named it in honor of Lottie Moon, a celebrated SBC missionary to China who gave her life there. Since then, in addition to Cooperative Program gifts, Southern Baptists have given more than $5 billion to fund their international missionaries and their work through the Lottie Moon Christmas Offering.4
I was one of those missionaries. Even as I type those words, tears stream down my face. I can’t help but be moved when I consider the faithfulness of those 327 delegates and the sacred purpose that drove them. I can’t help but be moved as I reflect on 179 years of faithful denominational sending to the nations. I can’t help but be moved as I think about generations of Southern Baptists from countless churches who gave so my family could glorify God and reach the lost.
This is the Christmas season, and faithful Southern Baptists turn their thoughts and hearts to the world at this time of year. For many, it might seem like something we always do or an unexpected expense at a difficult financial time. But for me and my family, it was a lifeline for 27 years. Sixty percent of all IMB financial support comes from the Lottie Moon Christmas Offering, and 100 percent of that offering goes straight to the field to support the mission efforts of thousands of IMB missionaries. The LMCO is not designated for administrative costs or used in the United States. It is completely invested in those on the front lines. When we served as rural church planters in Sub-Saharan Africa, we were fully funded by the LMCO. As I drove on deserted, dangerous, dusty roads to get to people with no Gospel witness, I drove in a truck that Lottie had purchased. When I delivered food relief to starving people along a river devastated by flood waters, I delivered food from Lottie in a boat purchased by Lottie. When our family lived in places that were not easy to live in, we lived in houses that Lottie had built, drank water from a well dug by Lottie, and slept soundly at night because of the guards that Lottie employed.
When my children went to boarding school because there was no better option for them that would keep us on the front lines, Lottie paid their school fees. When my young child burned with fever from malaria in the dark watches of the night or when another needed to travel to a different country because of a tropical disease, Lottie paid for medical care and put this father’s heart at ease.
Literally, everything we needed, from the clothes on our back and the food on our table to needed ministry supplies and everything in between, was provided because Southern Baptists gave. How can I not be moved with grateful emotion?
For 27 years, Southern Baptists literally “held the rope” for us by praying intensely for our work and our family and by giving to support us through the Cooperative Program and the LMCO. We were even honored to have churches send volunteers to come and work alongside us. Giving, praying, and going; that is who we are as a denomination. That is what makes me proud to be a Southern Baptist. That is what makes us unique, and it is what I believe glorifies God the most.
As you consider your giving this Christmas season, think about those 327 delegates. Think about the more than 25,000 missionaries who have been sent out over the years. Think about that faithful brother or sister you have never met in person, yet who labors in anonymity in a forgotten corner of the world. Think about their labor of love and willing sacrifice for the glory of God and the Gospel. Think about their private struggles, their loneliness, and the hardships endured by their children.
Think about our missionaries and give. I can assure you they are thinking about you, and thanking God for your giving to the LMCO and for holding the rope for them as they serve.
- I am indebted to Scott Hildreth for his detailed explanation of this process in his chapter From Missionary Society to a Convention of Churches in D. Scott Hildreth, Together On God’s Mission: How Southern Baptists Cooperate to Fulfill the Great Commission (Nashville: B&H Academic, 2018). ↩︎
- “Proceedings of the Southern Baptist Convention, held in Augusta Ga, May 8th-12th 1845,” Southern Baptist Historical Library and Archives, accessed December 3, 2024, http://media2.sbhla.org.s3. amazonaws.com/annuals/SBC_Annual_1845.pdf. ↩︎
- The International Mission Board, “175 years > 2020s,” accessed December 3, 2024, https://www.imb.org/175/decades/2020s/. ↩︎
- Myriah Snyder, “Lottie Moon Christmas Offering Hits Cumulative $5 Billion,” Baptist Press, April 12, 2021, https://www.baptistpress.com/resource-library/news/lottie-moon-christmas-offering-hits-cumulative-5-billion/. ↩︎
