Wanda Lee, executive director/treasurer of the Woman’s Missionary Union, gave the following talk in Houston June 18, during the opening session of the 26th annual meeting of the Council of Korean Southern Baptist Churches in America.
Thank you, Dr. Park, for your very kind invitation to share why I believe that missions, and therefore, WMU is important in the life of our churches.
I would also like to thank Angela Kim for her faithful service and partnership with WMU for many years, but especially these past three years as we have sought more intentionally to develop missions advocates and WMU leaders in the Korean Baptist churches.
Her vision for developing missions resources and Korean leadership has been invaluable as we at WMU try to resource all of our Southern Baptist churches.
When I visit a church I often ask church leaders two questions:
1. What kind of church do you want to grow?
2. What is it you hope your children will take away from their years of being in your church when they leave for college?
Once they share their desires with me, I usually respond by asking them to look at what they are doing at church to see if they are providing what will give them the results they want.
It is my hope whenever I have this conversation that church leaders tell me at least two things they want their church to do:
1. They want their church to help people have a strong faith based on a personal relationship with Jesus Christ.
2. They want their church to help people have a view of the world that matches how God sees it.
I think we all agree that the first statement is the heart of the church.
But some may ask why number two is important.
I believe when a church realizes it exists to help people come to faith and then equips them with the knowledge and tools to share their faith with others, they will be a church that loves and changes the world.
It is with these two statements in mind that national WMU plans its’ work.
The vision statement of national WMU reveals a two-prong approach to equipping preschoolers, children, youth and adults to be involved in God’s mission in the world. It simply states:
“WMU challenges Christian believers to understand and be radically involved in the mission of God.”
To help people understand the mission of God, we believe our churches must intentionally plan for times to share information about what God is doing around the world. Throughout scripture we are reminded that God has a heart for the nations of the world.
First Chronicles 16:8 says we are to make God “known among the nations.”
The Psalmist wrote in Psalm 96:3 “Declare his glory among the nations, his marvelous deeds among all people.”
We need to help our churches understand God’s heart for the world so we can develop that same kind of heart and hear God’s call to share His love with all people of the world.
That’s what missions education is all about.
At WMU we believe that small groups are the best way for age appropriate missions education to happen.
What do we try to prepare small groups to do? Jesus discipled people through teaching scripture, demonstrating how to pray for the world, and modeling how to minister to people.
When he prepared His followers for the time when he would leave them he gave them a challenge. We know it as the Great Commission found in Matthew 28:19-20.
“Therefore go and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and the Holy Spirit, and teaching them to obey everything I have commanded you. And surely I am with you always, to the very end of the age.”
When we determine that the church is to follow the path of Jesus we see that we need to disciple people in the same way. Through Mission Friends, Children in Action, and other small groups we can teach scripture that says God loves all the world.
A mature leader can model how to pray for the peoples of the world that do not know Christ and support, in prayer, missionaries who have gone to share their faith. That same leader can plan mission projects that will help new believers and others learn how to minister and how to share their faith as they go.
The focus of WMU is to provide this framework for what I call missions discipleship in such a way that everyone can understand God’s mission and get excited about being involved in His mission as they grow in their faith.
But Jesus did more than just give the disciples a challenge before He went to Heaven. Before Jesus gave his final instructions to the disciples, He told them why they were to go into all the world and what their priorities in life should be.
Scripture tells us He was responding to the question: What is the greatest commandment? In Matthew 22:37-40 Jesus said: “Love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul, and with all your mind. This is the first and greatest commandment. And the second is like it: Love your neighbor as yourself.”
The only way the church can make a radical difference in the world is if we as individuals first love God with all our heart, soul and mind. When we love God first, we will naturally begin to love others and care about what happens to them. Jesus gave us both the Great Commandment and the Great Commission to help us know how to live as His disciples.
God calls each one of us to come to him in faith, and then he challenges us to live in such a way that others will come to know Him as well.
We are never too young to begin the journey of faith and to begin to understand just how much God loves the world. When we understand how much He loves us, we will want to be involved in changing our world for Christ.
I became a follower of Christ when I was a child. My church did many good things, but failed to teach me about the world and my responsibility to accept the Great Commission as my own. When I became a pastor’s wife, my husband and I went to serve our first church. It was there that a group of women took me under their wing and taught me about missions, about the peoples of the world and how many people never have the chance to hear about God’s love. I began my journey of missions discipleship with WMU leaders as my teachers. After seven years of their teaching, my husband and I went to a little island off the coast of Venezuela as missionaries.
Missions education through WMU works. It changed my life by helping me see the world, not as others see it, but as God sees it and what He wants me to do as His follower to reach the world.
My mission field has changed through the years but today my calling is to help our churches see the importance of calling people to faith and training them in missions. My calling is to lead WMU to be that missions framework in the church that helps the church grow and fulfill its’ mission in the world.
It is my desire that WMU and your fellowship partner together to see Korean Baptist Churches claim the Great Commission as their own and become the greatest mission force that literally changes the world.