By Gregg Boll, Director of Missions, [email protected]

If I took a survey and asked all of you if you consider yourself more emotionally and spiritually healthy than you were 10 years ago, if you were completely honest, what would you say? A few folks we know seem to have an unswerving faith, an inner fortitude that seems to grow stronger with time, and are impervious to the trials of life. However, the surveys that have been conducted among the faithful in recent years seem to indicate that the emotional and spiritual health of most of us has taken a serious hit. I wish it weren’t so, but we now live in a world that bombards us with constant traumatic content. It is a well-documented fact that our phones use algorithms that deliver constant content designed to create more stress, anger, disgust, or lust in our hearts; that dopamine hit that keeps us scrolling. Life and ministry are already stressful enough without the added stress of learning about every tragedy, disaster, atrocity, and injustice that has just occurred somewhere to someone in the last hour. I’m not saying we shouldn’t be connected and informed. I’m not saying to bury your head in the sand or not to engage the big and bad world out there. I’m simply saying that we should stay grounded in the Word of God and evaluate every experience and world event through the lens of our faith and biblical worldview. I’m encouraging you to spend as much time in prayer and the Word as you do scrolling on your phone.

The other result, oddly, of this over-inundation of information is that it has the effect of isolating us, making us lonely. Rather than living and moving in the world of people with real interaction and relationships, it creates a virtual world where we really don’t need to engage with others, sometimes even the people we love. It becomes a substitute for real living and real relationships. That’s where the Association serves the most vital purpose for you and your church. We are here to do ministry with you. To walk beside you. To rejoice with you when you rejoice and to weep with you when you weep. We are here to remind you that you’re not alone in the hard work for the Kingdom you’re doing, and you’re not alone in the struggles and failures you are facing. We’re here to say, “we can do this together.”

As a Director of Missions, I am uniquely blessed to visit a large number of pastors and churches over a wide area of the city in any given year. In fact, the first surprising difference I noticed in the role of DOM compared to my pastoral role of 27 years was how refreshing it was to see so many of the Lord’s people worshipping in different ways in their unique cultural contexts. As a pastor, my world was somewhat smaller. Not less significant, but smaller. I interacted with my staff, members, and community, but my exposure to other pastors, churches, and ministries was limited. That can happen to us because of the extreme demands of pastoring a local church. We get so busy and focused on our ministry that we can lose sight of the bigger picture. That is why mission trips, training events, conventions, and interaction with other pastors at Associational gatherings become so vital to your spiritual and emotional health. As I visit, preach in, and meet with pastors and churches across our great Association, I am encouraged; I am encouraged by the hope and joy I see in our pastors. I see sleeping churches and complacent pastors waking up and wanting to engage their communities with the gospel. I see declining churches reaching out for help to become healthy again. I see churches celebrating baptisms again for the first time in years. The Spirit of God is alive and well in His churches and in the pastors of our Association. More of us are sensing a stirring of the Spirit of God, and the tumultuous events of our generation merely signal the approaching storm of a great revival.

If you asked me what one of the greatest goals I have for us as an Association, it would be that we would come together under the gospel and the Word of God; that we would genuinely, deeply love one another and appreciate each other’s uniqueness. Peter says that’s what should happen in the letter he writes. He says, “Since you have purified your souls in obedience to the truth for a sincere love of the brothers and sisters, fervently love one another from the heart”. (I Pet. 1:22)

Have you noticed that when times are good and easy, Christians have the luxury of nitpicking one another over our differences in doctrine and methodology? We should repent of this arrogance in judging another brother’s theology or way of doing things. As I was thinking critically about others’ theology, which wasn’t my own, the Lord nudged me and said, “Gregg, why is it that your own theology and ideology are the standard by which all other people’s theologies should be judged?” I’m certain that I’m right in what I believe, but what if I’m not? I have learned to appreciate the diversity within our churches in BR-KC rather than being threatened by them. I learn from the gospels that I shouldn’t see the diversity in the body as a threat but as an ally. At least, that is what the disciples learned in Luke 9: John answered and said, “Master, we saw someone casting out demons in Your name; and we tried to prevent him, because he does not follow along with us.” 50 But Jesus said to him, “Do not hinder him; for the one who is not against you is for you.” It’s ok to accept that we will never have perfect unity of theology until the Lord comes again. In the meantime, could we please discard our tendency to partner with people who only think and believe exactly as we do? You aren’t guilty by association if you partner with a church that doesn’t believe just like yours does. That has been the beauty of the S.B.C. for years: that we can put aside our slight differences in theology and practice to partner together for the gospel.

The assassination of Charlie Kirk, the anti-Christian motivated mass murders in Christian Schools, and a host of other events in our nation should have brought an important truth into clear focus for us. We who name the name of Christ, whatever our differences, are truly brothers and sisters in Christ who need one another, who ought to love one another and work together. The days are long gone when we had the luxury of biting and devouring one another. We have an enemy, to be certain; it isn’t other believers who don’t believe and practice their faith exactly like you do. It is Satan, manifesting himself through the actions of unregenerate mankind against the Church and Christ’s people. Within hours of Kirk’s death, I began to feel a profound kinship with every person who names the name of Christ, regardless of their particular brand of theology, whether or not they’re more premillennial or amillennial, more cessationist or non-cessationist, reformed or provisionalist, and, certainly, irrespective of their ethnicity or culture.

I could have devoted this report to the multitude of things I do throughout the year as your Director of Missions. Trust me, Brian and I stay plenty busy serving you. However, I thought it most important in this report to say, “I love you, I’m for you, we need each other as we take the gospel to a dying and hurting world.” This is the most important thing you need to hear from me.