Overseas Baptisms Top 300,000!
by Erich Bridges Vol. VIII, No. 3, March 1995
Meeting for the first time at a Southern Baptist seminary, Southeastern at Wake Forest, NC, Foreign Mission Board trustees learned that baptisms related to SBC foreign mission work totalled 302,132 in 1994 – the first time annual baptisms ever topped 300,000. That marks a tripling since 1980, the first year baptisms surpassed 100,000 in churches related to Southern Baptist missionaries. FMB President Jerry Rankin noted, "It probably represents well over one million professions of faith. Only a portion (of new converts) follow through immediately in baptism. We don't report professions of faith or try to compile them officially." The 1994 baptism total is the fourth record in a row and shows a 15% increase over 1993's count.
It also represents actual growth compared to the previous year, without substantial additions from countries newly added to the count, according to FMB evangelism and church growth consultant Jim Slack, who compiled the 1994 statistical report.
"We are well past any 'clean-up' growth that we talked about in the past," Slack said. "1993 was mixed because we still had some former Soviet areas that were reporting for the first time and getting into the count. But this time it's strictly what has been produced on the ground. When your baptisms are not just churches reporting that never before have, this is new growth, and very strong."
Yet perhaps most significant of all, a still small but steadily growing number of conversions and baptisms is occurring in places and peoples once considered entirely off-limits to the Christian gospel. The Cooperative Services International arm of the Foreign Mission Board, which quietly ministers among the peoples of "World A' — the unevangelized world blocked from "traditional" missions behind political, religious and cultural barriers — reported 3,809 baptisms. That total may seem tiny, but it's a 500-percent jump over the 1993 total. And it includes the first known baptisms recorded in modem times among several people groups.
Other significant growth reports emerged from hard mission fields still open to missionaries – but beset by war, suffering, or hostile opposition to Christians from opposing religions such as Islam.
"It really highlights the whole focus of being on mission with God," said Rankin. "In God's providence and power these things are happening. It defies explanation in terms of socio-religious or cultural obstacles, but it represents joining God in what he's doing."
When FMB mission planners developed strategies for World A in recent years, "it was without any real anticipation of immediate results," Rankin admitted. "We just knew we had to find some way to impact them with the gospel, but we didn't know what might come of it. To see the results when the gospel is made known is a surprise to everyone."
He quoted mission area director Bill Phillips, who coordinates mission work on some of the most difficult, Muslim-dominated fields of West Africa: "We no longer talk about responsive and unresponsive fields. Wherever the gospel is made known, people respond. Our challenge is to find the ways to impact people with the gospel."
The traditional "big seven" countries where Baptists are strong - Brazil, Nigeria, Kenya, South Korea, the Philippines, India, Mexico - appear once again in the top 25 list of countries for baptisms. Brazil tops the list with 69,373. Nigeria comes in second with 38,340, followed by Kenya with 20,042 and South Korea with 17,810.
But some new faces also appear: Ukraine finished sixth with 9,798 baptisms, with Russia right behind at 9,759.
A "partner country" - where mission realities dictate that the country can't even be named in print - reported 6,199 baptisms, nearly breaking into the top 10. Even some of the perennial harvest fields like Nigeria, India, and the Philippines face growing pressure from religious opposition and turmoil. Nigeria, where political strife threatens everyone and northern Muslims violently persecute Christians, still finished near the top in baptisms.
"We're reaching a lot of new countries and new areas in Eastern Europe and among World A people groups, but where we've served for over 100 years, we're seeing accelerated harvest," Rankin aid.
Even more revealing are average baptisms per church and church member-to-baptism ratios in some smaller or "hard" mission fields where raw baptism totals are lower. The eight affiliated Baptist churches in Israel, for example, members, baptized 81 converts. That's 10 per church, or about one per eight members. "That's phenomenal," said Slack. The member-to-baptism ratio among Southern Baptists in the United States, by comparison, is 40 to 1.
Struggling Ethiopia's 587 baptisms in 1994 represented one for every 2.2 church members-indisputably the best such ratio in the Baptist world. Mozambique, considered by many the poorest country in the world, witnessed 1,321 baptisms – 73 per church, or one for every eight members. Slack: "Those combinations are just astounding."
Each conversion or baptism tells a story - of death and resurrection, of a new life, of Christ's redeeming love. Here are a few from 1994:
- Last summer Baptists in Belarus (formerly a part of the Soviet Union) decided to go to a city recreation area with a big lake to baptize eight new believers. When they got out there, they found about 2,000 other people relaxing around the lake.
The Baptists went ahead with a short service; Foreign Mission Board missionary Larry Pritchett preached. Nearly 150 people professed faith in Christ on the spot. When the baptisms of the eight began, some of the thousand or so people who had gathered around to watch started walking into the water with their clothes on, asking to be baptized too.
That "just doesn't happen" in Belarus, which still lacks many freedoms now known in Russia, said Pritchett. He had no way to explain it – except that "God's hand was upon them that day."
- On July 4, Southern Baptist missionaries and volunteers in Mali, West Africa, celebrated their American holiday together, then went to the village of Sitikoto - far up a narrow, rocky path winding around a mountainside. After seven years of hearing God's Word, the villagers had become responsive and many had accepted Christ.
As the group sat under a tree by a campfire singing praises to God, they watched their number increase as the villagers joined them. When the rain stopped the entire village assembled for the baptism. The group shed tears of joy as they watched 77 villagers baptized, each with a testimony to the changing power of Christ's love.
- In the Kondh Hills of India's Orissa state, agricultural ministries combine with intensive training of young leaders and a pioneer radio program in the tribal Kui language. Thousands of people gather in more than 200 "listener groups" twice a week to listen together to the radio broadcast. More than 10,000 of them were Hindus - at least in the beginning. More than 2,000 of them have become believers in Jesus Christ, and several hundred of them had been baptized by the end of the year.
- A former Muslim woman in northern Africa was baptized secretly early last year. But even that act demonstrated extreme bravery. To acknowledge Jesus Christ as Savior and Son of God, even among a handful of other Christian believers, was to risk death among her people. She became one of an estimated five Christians among the 1 million members of her people group - where the gospel is being preached for the first time in a thousand years.
- On "the very day" Southern Baptists and other Christians around the world were praying for a particularly resistant Muslim people group, Christians baptized the first known converts - ever- among that group.
"They attribute it almost solely to focused prayer," said Lewis Myers of the Foreign Mission Board. "Because in the Muslim environment, people might express some interest in Christ or even say, `I believe in him.' But the decisive issue for them is baptism. That's the break point with one's traditional religion, culture, even family." [BP]