Imagine it’s 2033 and Baptist associations are celebrated for achieving the lead role within Baptist life for the fulfillment of the Great Commission.
This happened because they focused eight years earlier on discerning anew what it means to be a family of congregations on mission both globally and locally (sometimes referred to as “glocally”) from the base of their associational fellowship context.
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Using the pattern of Leviticus 25:1–13, they spent 2025 engaging in a spiritual, family-oriented process to prepare to celebrate a year of Jubilee in 2026.
Then in 2027 they embarked on a seven-year sabbatical cycle following the Leviticus pattern. They spent six years engaged in bold spiritual and strategic planting, cultivating, growing, harvesting and sharing their abundance glocally.
In 2032 they took a year to rest, to discern what the next seven-year sabbatical cycle might look like.
They looked at how the phenomenal effort of the previous seven years catapulted them into the lead role for Kingdom progress throughout what I call the Southern Baptist movement.
Why did they do this?
Associational leaders realized the movement waned as compared to population increases and diversification during the previous decades. The movement experienced a net decline in membership and participation.
Baptists were no longer realizing their Kingdom potential, but the loss of potential was difficult to see because many of the routine denominational reports made it seem like things were going well.
In certain ways things were going well. Many programs, ministries and activities of the movement through associations, state or regional conventions, national entities and institutions were high in quality.
Yet the success that was experienced paled in comparison to what a sacrificial, full-surrender approach might yield. The potential of the movement was so much greater, and the distance between current effectiveness and the potential was increasingly growing wider.
Nondenominational church networks soared but did not have the missions potential of the movement. They focused more on church growth than Kingdom growth. Many congregations chose a homogeneous approach of skimming the surface of the population demographics around them.
This left multiple pockets of unmet needs among people groups. Few congregations were spiritually and strategically focused to share the good news of Jesus with these unreached and underreached people groups in an effective manner.
What if the movement experienced a new start?
The movement did not discount the progress made by Bold Mission Thrust in the 1970s and 1980s or the Great Commission Resurgence efforts of the last 15 years. However, both of these emphases were driven by the regional and national organizational structure of Baptists.
What if the driving force shifted to the grassroots level instead? After all, that’s where the voice of the Holy Spirit is the clearest motivator of missional action with global impact.
And so it did. It happened one Baptist association at a time — and it had a historic footprint to follow.
Nearly 275 years ago, the Charleston Baptist Association — the first Baptist association in the South — formed in 1751. The first state convention — the South Carolina Baptist Convention — followed in 1821. Then the Southern Baptist Convention was formed in 1845.
All three dimensions of the denomination are still crucial to the movement. However, developing Baptist denominational strategies first at the grassroots level was extremely important for this new wave of Kingdom impact in the 21st century to have the greatest empowerment.
The new start needed to begin in the local context and be led by Baptist associations, exactly as it happened between 1751 and 1845, when the denomination was formed. Starting with associations provided the agility and responsiveness needed.
What do we need to understand for the next wave?
This is the first of a series of columns that will explain various strategies that could be used to experience the next wave of Kingdom progress.
To understand this type of futurist perspective, imagine you are standing in the year 2033 and watching the progression of the Baptist movement come toward you.
The purpose is to stretch the spiritual and strategic imagination of Baptist associational leaders — and to challenge them about a new direction that might seem improbable unless we discover that God is already going before us in this direction.
