PANAMA CITY, Panama (ABP) — Twenty-five Virginia Baptists traveled to Panama Jan. 26 for the annual meeting of the Panama Baptist Convention and to sign documents establishing a five-year partnership between that body and the Baptist General Association of Virginia.
Dancers lead a celebration during the annual meeting of the Panama Baptist Convention.
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Francisco Medina, president of the Panama convention, addressed the group, stressing they are all one body and are to work together.
“We cannot do it by ourselves alone as if we are an island,” he said with occasional assistance from an interpreter. “I think the response of God is your being here. It is the will of God that we be here. It is not just you helping us, but us helping each other. We want each church to be a missionary church not just waiting for people to come. We need to change the arrows to point out. We need to reach those people. So that is the emphasis.”
In the first evening session of the annual meeting, Virginia Baptist mission leader Jerry Jones continued the theme of partnership.
Francisco Medina, president of the Panama Baptist Convention, discusses the new partnership with Virginia Baptists.
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“Virginia Baptists are not going to partner with Baptists in Panama," he said. "Panamanian Baptists are not going to partner with Virginia Baptists. Jesus Christ is going to partner with us both to bring about his will and reach people for him.”
BGAV executive director John Upton, who also is president of the Baptist World Alliance, brought greetings on behalf of Virginia Baptists and the BWA.The primary speaker for the evening, Daniel Carro, used the Acts 8 account of Phillip sharing the gospel with the Ethiopian.
“Where is Samaria?” asked Carro, a Hispanic consultant for Virginia Baptists and a vice president of the BWA.
Several participants shouted answers in Spanish, “It’s in the North!”
“And where was the Ethiopian? Way down here in the South,” Carro shouted in Spanish, drawing an imaginary line with his hand. “Why did the Holy Spirit have to go all the way up here to get someone to share Christ with somebody way down here when Jerusalem is right between them?”
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Jim White is editor of the Religious Herald.