PANAMA CITY, Panama — To celebrate the theme “Getting outside our churches,” 25 Virginia Baptists travelled to Panama Jan. 26 to attend 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.
Francisco Medina, president of the Panama Baptist Convention, discusses the new partnership with Virginia Baptists. (Photo by Jim White) |
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 our convention the role of leadership is not what it was in the past,” he emphasized. “Many people use Panama for evil purposes. They spread weapons and [sexual] slavery, and because of its strategic location, Panama is key. We believe God wants to make Panama the center of spreading the gospel.”
In the first evening session of the annual meeting, Virginia Baptist mission leader Jerry Jones continued the theme of partnership.
“Virginia Baptists are not going to partner with Baptists in Panama. 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, and captivated the convention with accounts of thanks to worldwide Baptists offered by the president of South Africa and by the king of the Zulu tribe. Each had come to faith in Christ because of the witness of Baptists who brought hospitals and schools and the gospel to their part of the world.
The primary speaker for the evening, Daniel Carro, used the Acts 8 account of Phillip sharing the gospel with the Ethiopian.
Dancers lead a celebration during the annual meeting of the Panama Baptist Convention. (Photo by Jim White)
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“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?”
Carro postulated that the Spirit had approached many who were closer but was told they were busy. They could not help. Driving home the point, he emphasized that the Spirit is coming to Christians with an assignment to take the message of Christ to those around them.
The theme continued uninterrupted the next morning as Dennis Pethers, founder of Viz-A-Viz Ministries, addressed the convention, challenging it to think about its own attitudes about the “unchurched.” Viz-A-Viz Ministries is a United Kingdom-based organization which partners with churches to share the gospel.
Telling how he came from a family in Britain that never once attended church, Pethers said they didn’t intentionally decide not to attend church — there was simply no reason they saw to start.
Pethers shared how he found faith in Christ through the influence of C.S. Lewis’s book, Mere Christianity and while sitting on a train he finally gave his heart to Christ.
“As I sat on that train outside of London,” he recalled, “I prayed. I had never prayed before. I prayed under my breath because there were a lot of people around. I didn’t end with ‘Amen,’ because I didn’t know you had to say that to let God know you were finished.” The comment translated well and drew hearty laughter from his listeners.
”All around the world there are people who don’t know whether they believe in God or not,” said Pethers. “These are the people we need to try to reach, not the people who are in church every Sunday.”
“We need to pose Jesus as the question before we present Jesus as the answer. People don’t know anything about Jesus. We need to tell them who he is,” Pethers asserted.
The convention continued through Jan. 28 and will feature a signing of the partnership covenant between Virginia and Panama Baptists.
Jim White is editor of the Religious Herald.