By Will Hall, Baptist Message executive editor
ALEXANDRIA, La. (LBM) – Historians have traced the tradition of New Year’s resolutions to about 4,000 years ago and the ancient Babylonians, who celebrated a 12-day festival of planting at the start of their new year (March) by promising their gods to pay back debts and return borrowed items. Nearly 2,000 years later when emperor Julius Caesar established January 1 as the beginning of the annual calendar, the Romans adopted similar practices, offering sacrifices and promising to be good in the coming year.
Today, New Year’s Eve and New Year’s Day are celebrated worldwide, and research indicates that in the United States up to half of adults make some sort of resolution (typically regarding health, fitness or finances, but Bible study and prayer are popular commitments among Christians).
However, for 2025, I urge Louisiana Baptists to resolve to do something more meaningful than just “better oneself” – even spiritually. Instead, I call on Louisiana Baptists to make a specific commitment to win souls to Christ!
Soul winning is not something new to Louisiana Baptists. Indeed, it is believed that in 1799 Baptist preacher Joseph Willis swam the Mississippi River on the back of a mule into the Louisiana Territory specifically to win souls in places where the Gospel had not gone before (He was the first evangelical to preach west of the Mississippi River). Moreover, in 2022, Louisiana Baptists saw baptisms increase 18.8 percent above 2021, then surge another 31.1 percent in 2023 – translating into 6,690 souls won in 2022 and 8,770 in 2023!
Importantly, two developments suggest that the fields are yet “white unto harvest”:
— Despite the trend of more and more Americans identifying as religiously nonaffiliated, news outlets reported that Bible purchases in our country rose 22 percent in 2024. Meanwhile, all other book sales were up just one percent, according to the Wall Street Journal.
— Additionally, the American Bible Society reported survey findings that 44 percent of Gen Z adults are curious about Jesus and the Bible (and the Washington Times offered that young men especially have renewed interest in biblical faith).
Corporately, Louisiana Baptists have made multiple commitments to soul winning:
— In 2023, we pledged to fortify a culture of evangelism among our churches and concomitantly launched Send Network Louisiana, an effort to baptize 28,875 new believers (an estimated one percent of the lost population in our state) through 231 new church plants by 2033.
— We host yearly YEC, CEC and ECON events as both training and outreach efforts.
— On top of that, major area-wide local crusades are planned for 2025.
Just to name a few.
But more needs to be done by each of us.
There are many ways one could define what it means to be more like Jesus, and various religious websites offer an array of options such as “be a better moral person,” “love your enemies” and “be humble.” One simply listed the fruit of the Spirit found in Galatians 5:22-23 (“love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness and self-control”).
However, none mentioned the key characteristic that Jesus used to describe Himself – soul winning (Luke 19:10 “for the Son of Man has come to seek and save that which is lost”). It is true that this self-description has a specific application: Jesus spoke it while declaring “salvation has come” to the house of Zacchaeus.
But He repeatedly announced that it was His purpose to preach the “Kingdom of God,” meaning repentance, redemption and restoration, or more simply put, the offer of salvation through Himself (Luke 4:43; 8:1). Moreover, this was his priority during His forty-day ministry after being resurrected (Acts 1:3). Indeed, Christ’s first intentional act upon being raised from the grave was to delay any other event so that He could lead two men to salvation who knew Him only as a prophet or a Nazarene, but not yet as “Lord” (Luke 24, esp. vv. 19, 34).
So, in 2025, don’t set typical goals for self-improvement. Instead, follow Jesus’ perfect example. Resolve to be more Christlike, a soul winner, and “seek and save that which is lost.”
