In response to the Southern Baptist Convention (SBC) ’s challenge to double baptisms in 2005, LifeWay Christian Resources announced its plan of investing more than $1.6 million in 14 Baptist state conventions to support evangelism projects.
Fourteen state conventions are: Alabama, the Dakotas, Florida, Georgia, Illinois, Iowa, Louisiana, Mississippi, Montana, Nevada, New England, Oklahoma, Pennsylvania/New Jersey and Southern Baptists of Texas.
Strategies have been planned out to decide how the funds should be spent to help the 14 Baptist state conventions reaching their goals. A wide range of programs helping to support evangelism have been laid out, these include state fair evangelism, youth counters, evangelism training, university evangelism, statewide “wave” evangelism, outreach Bible studies, revival training, community evangelism events, and regional evangelism among several states.
LifeWay Christian Resources President James T. Draper Jr shared his vision for Southern Baptists to reach 1 million baptisms in a single year. “God has given us the vision to baptize 1 million people next year, and he has blessed LifeWay with the resources to help state conventions see a doubling of baptisms in their states using evangelism tools that work best for them. We asked the states to dream big, and these 14 states most certainly did, and we are excited about what God will do through us in the coming year,” he said.
Ted Warren, LifeWay’s executive vice president and chief operating officer also commented that doubling the number of baptisms in any state convention is impossible without assistance from God. “But we believe God is honored when we trust Him for impossible things that we know will bring Him great glory and honor. We believe this is a God-given vision that He will equip us to achieve.”
