Memories of fishing the riverbanks and swamps in Louisiana left an impression on Tony Wolfe, executive director of the South Carolina Baptist Convention.
Wolfe fondly shared some of the lessons from fishing he learned during the convention sermon at the 2025 Southern Baptist Convention Annual Meeting (June 10–11) in Dallas. He specifically applied some of them to the challenges and decisions Baptists face today.
Pulling his message from Ecclesiastes 11:1–6, Wolfe urged messengers to not retreat from their global mission.
Amid celebrations focused on the centennial of Southern Baptist’s giving channel for missions and ministry, Wolfe noted the Cooperative Program has helped the SBC become a “powerful force in advancing the Great Commission.”
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“We send our bread on the surface of the waters, sacrificially and joyfully together, because when we do, wherever it is needed most, there we know after many days we may find it,” he noted, referring to the Cooperative Program as an exercise in “sacrificial, forward faith.”
While Wolfe acknowledged there are things that may frustrate him about “Southern Baptist’s cooperative work,” he remains enthusiastic about the effort.
“It is my prerogative to stay joyfully, sacrificially and strategically engaged doing everything I can to move us toward greater clarity, greater missional effectiveness. … I’m still casting lines in this flowing river.”
Urgent mission
The gospel message is too urgent, the mission too clear, and time is too short to waste a single day of “staring at the clouds or overanalyzing the winds,” he said.
While the Cooperative Program is not a “foolproof investment,” Wolfe noted it is the best strategy Southern Baptists have to make a difference with a “unified effort.”
“As a Southern Baptist people, never have we possessed more technology, more intelligence, more global access, more financial resources or more organizational strength than right now,” Wolfe said. “Yet still, the question persists: Will ours be the generation that sees the retrenchment of our global war on lostness? Today, let the Kay Bailey Hutchison Convention Hall in Dallas, Texas, resound with our unified, exclamatory, ‘No.’ — it must not be; it will not be.”
Looking ahead
Baptists should consider what the next generation will see 100 years from now, he asked.
“May God be so pleased that multitudes among the nations would hear that Jesus Christ lived a perfect, sinless life they could not live, died the substitutionary death that they deserve, was buried in a borrowed tomb to take these consequences of their sins to the pits of the grave where they could never fully take it on their own,” he said. “And just as the Scriptures had predicted, three days later rose from the dead to seal victory over sin, death and hell. Not just for Himself but for you and me and any person, anywhere down through the ages who would repent, believe in Him and call on His name. This is our message, this is our moment, this is our time, don’t waste it.”
