By Carol Pipes
NASHVILLE, Tenn. – Meeting in person for the first time since 2019, around 150 ministry leaders from 26 state conventions gathered Dec. 5-7 at Forest Hills Baptist Church in Nashville, Tennessee, for Lifeway’s annual Partners’ Summit.
Every year, Lifeway hosts the Partners’ Summit to provide opportunities for networking, fellowship and encouragement, as well as skill development through collaborative learning.
Focused on the theme of “Reconnect,” ministry leaders were encouraged and challenged by main session speakers and learned skills and strategies from Lifeway ministry leaders in breakout sessions focused on specific ministry roles. Speakers included Lifeway President and CEO Ben Mandrell, SBC President Bart Barber and Blackaby Ministries International President Richard Blackaby. Ministry leaders also heard updates from Lifeway leaders in the areas of Kids, Students, Adults, Women, Global, Bibles and IT.
On Wednesday, Blackaby began his time by saying how good it is to reconnect with people in person. “Isn’t it good just seeing people face-to-face again just to be in same room with one another and to see you are part of a family that’s all serving the same king?”
Addressing the group, Blackaby spent time exploring Jesus’ model of discipleship found in Scripture. He noted the pandemic had exposed a lack of discipleship in many of our churches.
“I feel like in so many ways, leaders all over America are looking at the damage of the last couple years and saying, ‘Where do we go from here? Where are those people that used to be in my church? Why are they not here anymore?’”
He said many church leaders realized they had been making church attenders instead of disciples. Those who had been comfortable observing church services from a back pew found it was even easier to attend and observe online.
“We wonder why they don’t want to attend anymore,” he said, “because we gave them an easier way to view it.”
Blackaby said one of the resounding things he hears from church leaders post-COVID is that they need to change the way they’ve discipled their people.
“If we’re ever going to reconnect with God and with each other, we’ve got to understand the nature of discipleship,” Blackaby said. He encouraged leaders to look at how Jesus discipled His followers as the perfect model. “There’s a beauty in the simplicity of what Jesus does.”
Blackaby noted that discipleship is messy and time consuming, but we often want a short cut. “We always want that one home run hit that wins the game, and Jesus would say, ‘Just keep making disciples.’”
He acknowledged that a pastor cannot disciple everybody in the church. Others must be equipped to make disciples. “You have to get a handful of people you disciple, and then as they get mature, you send them out to disciple, and then you get more people to disciple.”
Blackaby pointed to the way Jesus made disciples. “Jesus invited them into a relationship, and in that relationship, those disciples turned their world upside down. Jesus transformed the world one disciple at a time.”
SBC President Bart Barber talked about the history of the Southern Baptist Convention and how Southern Baptists can reconnect to the mission. He acknowledged that each person has a story in his or her mind about who they are as Southern Baptists, and it’s probably not the same for everyone.
“Sometimes I think the reason we struggle all connecting on our shared mission as Southern Baptists is because we’re operating with different stories in our minds about who we are as Southern Baptists,” Barber said.
Barber described the SBC’s history in three acts that highlight some of the unique stresses and questions Southern Baptists have addressed in the past and are addressing today. Act One, the earliest years of the Convention, Barber said, was an ecclesiological movement based on the question: what does a church have to be to be a real church?
Act Two, in the 1900s, shifted from the question of what a church must be to be a real church to a moment when Southern Baptists began asking: what does a church have to do to be successful? How can we innovate to be successful?
In this period, Barber said, Southern Baptists were creating institutions and innovating to find ways to accomplish things that would make the Convention successful in the mission of God.
In Act Three, the question asked in the early 21st century is how should our church be organized to be healthy?
Barber said all three of these acts have something important to say to us. What it means to be a church, how to stay on mission, and what it means to be a healthy church are all important questions for us to think about.
“Our reconnecting for the mission is going to require us to take the time to listen to each other and hear what story of the Southern Baptist Convention each of us is telling and to learn that those stories are not in competition with one another.
“They all connect with each other in ways that, in the unity of the Spirit and the bond of peace, we can help bring every one of those subplots that’s a part of the history of what God is doing in this family churches to move forward to a good outcome that honors God and wins people to Christ.”
Lifeway President Ben Mandrell closed the meeting by challenging leaders to remember Paul’s charge in Ephesians 5:8-10 to walk as children of light and discern what is pleasing to the Lord.
“There’s this moment where Paul says something almost in passing, but it could be the mission statement on all of our desks,” Mandrell said. “In Ephesians 5:10, Paul says find out what is pleasing to the Lord. No matter what state you live in, what position you hold, your main reason for still having air in your lungs is that God still has some things He wants you to discover in pleasing Him.”
Mandrell said Paul provides three ways to please God: goodness, righteousness and truth (Ephesians 5:9). Mandrell went on to explore the ways believers can grow in those areas and live the life Jesus modeled for His followers.
“Woe to us if we work at denominational posts, and we tell other people how to grow their churches, but we’re not growing in goodness, righteousness and truth.”
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Carol Pipes is director of communications for Lifeway Christian Resources.
About Lifeway Christian Resources
In operation since 1891, Lifeway Christian Resources is one of the leading providers of Christian resources, including Bibles, books, Bible studies, Christian music and movies, Vacation Bible School and church supplies, as well as camps and events for all ages. Lifeway is the world’s largest provider of Spanish Bibles. Based in Nashville, Tennessee, Lifeway operates as a self-supporting nonprofit. For more information, visit Lifeway.com.
