As you may recall, I was blessed with the opportunity to attend the Southern Baptist Convention Annual Meeting in Anaheim, CA this past summer as a Messenger representing Redeemer Bible Church. While there were many topics discussed at this event, the main focus was determining how the SBC was going to respond to the findings of the Guidestone Solutions Report detailing years of improper handling of sexual abuse cases by cooperating churches and SBC leadership.

What I will remember as one of the most meaningful moments of my life took place on the second day of the vote when I raised my ballot in support of the recommendations of the Sexual Abuse Task Force. 
Throughout the weekend I had the chance to meet with survivors and those who have been working to make churches a safe place for survivors and a place safe from predators. These experiences caused me to realize that merely raising my hand was an empty gesture without working to implement change on a grassroots level.

Upon my return, I drew up a list of recommendations for our elders which included implementing the Caring Well Challenge here at Redeemer Bible Church––a recommendation with which they unanimously agreed.

To address the issue of abuse in the SBC and its member churches two things need to happen. One, there needs to be a systematic change of policies and procedures. More importantly, we must change the culture that has allowed predators to flourish.

Here are a few staggering statistics from the SBC of Virginia:

• Child check-in systems are good, but only 4% of cases result in abductions.
• Background checks are important, but less than 10% of abusers encounter the criminal justice system.
• Policies are beneficial, but they must be contextualized and take into account how sexual predators commit their crimes.

But prevention is just one part of addressing abuse in the church. We must also meet the needs of survivors. One in four women sitting in our pews and one in six men have been victims of abuse.

For those of you asking how the Gospel fits in with all of this, I will share survivor and advocate, Rachael Denhollander’s words, “Trauma survivors are the unreached people group of our time. We expect missionaries to contextualize their people groups. We must do the same for the one in four and the one in six.”

The gospel calls us to champion the dignity of all people, including the vulnerable in our midst that have experienced abuse.

You will be hearing a lot about the Caring Well Challenge over the next year. At last Sunday’s Business Meeting, I gave a brief presentation explaining the history of the program and what it means for our church going forward.

At the 2018 Southern Baptist Annual Meeting, a motion was made to form a presidential task force to address the issue of abuse. In the fall of 2018, SBC President J.D. Greear, in partnership with the Ethics and Religious Liberties Commission (an SBC entity), appointed a Sexual Abuse Advisory Group with the purpose of evaluating needs in this area and addressing opportunities to strengthen and enhance churches’ care for survivors, prevention, and response to abuse. 

During the first phase of this process, the SBC Sexual Abuse Advisory Group interviewed hundreds of survivors, advocates, outside experts, and pastors to hear their stories and learn from their viewpoints.
From this, the Advisory Group sought to develop resources and recommendations to equip SBC churches with the tools, strategies, and partnerships to more effectively care for survivors and to prevent abuse before it occurs. It was out of this effort that the Caring Well Challenge was birthed.

The Caring Well Challenge is a unified call to action on the abuse crisis in the Southern Baptist Convention. It provides churches with a simple, adaptable, and attainable pathway to immediately strengthen their efforts to prevent abuse and care for abuse survivors. 

Committing ourselves to being a part of this initiative provides our church an opportunity to link hearts and arms with, and to continue to learn from, other churches as we strive to be vigilant in caring for one another, particularly those who have been or are being abused in our church.

Over the next year, we will be implementing the eight steps of the Caring Well Challenge. The first of which will be building a Caring Well Team that will coordinate this ministry. They will lead our efforts to equip our leaders to care well for the abused and to enhance our policies, procedures, and practices related to abuse. This team will be introduced to the entire church body on The Caring Well Challenge Launch Sunday and will be available as a resource for our members.

I’ll close by sharing the words of Immediate Past SBC President Ed Litton. He began by reading Matthew 9:35, “‘Jesus continued going around to all the towns and villages, teaching in the synagogues, preaching the good news of the kingdom, and healing every disease and every sickness. When he saw the crowds, he felt compassion for them, because they were distressed and dejected, like sheep without a shepherd. Then he said to his disciples, ‘The harvest is abundant, but the workers are few. Therefore, pray to the Lord of the harvest to send out workers into his harvest.'”

He continued, “The word for compassion translates to a ‘moving of the intestines.’ Jesus experienced what we would call a ‘punch to the gut’ when he looked upon the crowds. If you see someone who needs something, don’t let your eyes look away. If we are not moved to action we will become indifferent. We need to also see the harvest of those that are burdened and broken down by their past trauma. We need to bring them to the only One who can truly heal their pain.”

I am honored and humbled to be able to serve our church body by coordinating the implementation of the Caring Well Challenge at Redeemer Bible Church and look forward to sharing more details in the weeks and months ahead.

Heather Ablondi–SBC Messenger

A Call to Prioritize Unreached People Groups

[Romans 10:14-15 ESV] 14 How then will they call on him in whom they have not believed? And how are they to believe in him of whom they have never heard? And how are they to hear without someone preaching? 15 And how are they to preach unless they are sent? As it is written, “How beautiful are the feet of those who preach the good news!”

[Romans 15:20 ESV] 20 and thus I make it my ambition to preach the gospel, not where Christ has already been named, lest I build on someone else’s foundation.

As of today, approximately 7-10% of the world’s population professes to believe the gospel of Jesus Christ. Approximately 33% of the world’s population are non-evangelical Christians. “Non-evangelical” Christians profess to believe in Jesus but reject or do not follow the core teachings of Jesus. This leaves approximately 57% of the world’s population who do not believe in Jesus (Remaining Missions Task).

As evangelical Christians, we believe that Jesus Christ is the only way to salvation. The only way to be saved from the wrath of God is by God’s grace alone through faith in Jesus Christ alone. Jesus said that those who don’t believe “are condemned already.” (John 3:18) Because humanity is lost without faith in Jesus, we devote our time, prayers, and resources to reach the lost around us and abroad. We send ministers to Bible college to equip the saints to bring the good news of salvation to his or her families, workplaces, neighbors, or any other situation that would call us to “give a defense for the hope that is within us.” (1 Peter 3:15) This is great news for the unbelievers who have access to the gospel through the witness of the local church. However, there are more unbelievers today in places where there is no possibility of meeting a Christian, than the population of North America, South America, Central America, Western Europe, North Africa, and the Middle East combined. (Frontier Peoples Overview)

Imagine being an unbeliever and having no believing Christians in your city. Now imagine that among your whole nation, there are no Christians that speak your language. Now imagine being that person who lives his or her life without hearing the good news and dies in his or her sins without the saving hope of Jesus Christ. This is the reality for unreached people groups (UPGs) all over the world. “An unreached or least-reached people is a people group among which there is no indigenous community of believing Christians with adequate numbers and resources to evangelize this people group without outside assistance.” (Unreached Peoples Overview)

Furthermore, this is the reality for one in four human beings on the planet today. India alone holds 1.3 billion souls who have no access to the gospel. There are approximately 1.8 billion Muslims who have no access to the gospel. These are not people who have churches down the road, in the next town over, or the next city over. These are people who don’t have any person who knows Jesus Christ anywhere near them who speaks their language or understands their culture.

Therefore, we need to send missionaries where they’re needed most. There are many missionaries throughout the world today. For the purpose of this article, I will define missionary as someone who has the gift of teaching or evangelism who is sharing the gospel with people of a different language or culture than his or her own. As of today, for every missionary that the church sends to the unreached of the world, she sends 30 missionaries to places who have a Christian witness. (Remaining Mission Task) If we are going to accomplish the Great Commission, we must establish the unreached people of the world in our hearts.

Although this may seem like an impossible task, nothing is impossible with God. The wisdom of man or fleshly strength alone cannot accomplish this task. God has already established His church in places previously thought impossible by man with far less technology and resources than those that are in our grasps today. We are seeing this reality today as the global south (the countries south of the equator) are sending out more missionaries than America. (Sutter, 2021) These brothers and sisters live in abject poverty yet are answering the call to travel sea and land to share the gospel of Jesus Christ.

Therefore, let’s go where the gospel has never gone. Pray that the Lord would open the doors for believers to go into all the world. Pray that God would raise up a generation of missionaries who would recover the original calling of a missionary: “the call to die.”1 Pray that God would prepare the way by His spirit for the obedient missionaries from all over the world who will pioneer the gospel among UPGs. Pray for current cross-cultural missionaries who are serving in locations that are geographically convenient to reach UPGs, that they would equip the indigenous churches to send out missionaries to places that westerners have no access to.

Jacob Foster-ministry intern

Hyperlinks
Remaining Mission Task (joshuaproject.net)
why-still-unreached.pdf (joshuaproject.net)
frontier-peoples-overview.pdf (joshuaproject.net) (Unreached Peoples Overview, n.d.) https://joshuaproject.net/assets/media/handouts/unreached-peoples-overview.pdf
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1 Call to Missions: A Death Sentence – BMW (biblicalministries.org)