Southwestern turns focus to the nations during Global Missions Week

Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary celebrated and encouraged its core value of being globally engaged with a Global Missions Emphasis week, Sep. 3-6, which included a variety of opportunities for students to meet missionaries, hear from evangelism and missions faculty, and learn of opportunities for them join in missions.

“This is a very important week for our community as we stop and reflect upon the Southwestern heritage of commitment to taking the Gospel to the nations and renewing that commitment together,” Southwestern President David S. Dockery said while introducing chapel Tuesday, Sept. 3. “… We give thanks to God for how he has used this institution in days past to prepare men and women to go into every continent and take the Gospel to the unreached people groups.”

Kevin Rodgers, associate professor of missions for the Roy J. Fish School of Evangelism and Missions, spoke in the first chapel of the week about the heart of God for the missionary task. Rodgers preached from three passages of Scripture that addressed mass language events that either divided the nations, such as at the Tower of Babel, or united the nations, such as at Pentecost and the end times prophecies in Revelation, referring to when all nations will one day worship before the throne of God.

Kevin Rodgers, associate professor of missions, speaks during a Global Missions Week chapel.

“None of us are home yet,” said Rodgers, who spent 27 years serving as a missionary in Africa. “We look for that great day when we will join Christ in glory and be there with him and experience that moment of homecoming to our true heavenly home. Until that time, we’re all just sojourners together, right here at Southwestern Baptist Seminary, with a goal, with a purpose, with a desire to see God’s glory manifest across the planet.”

Rodgers also warned his listeners that not every sentiment of burden for the lost or for a specific culture or people group is a calling from the Lord to be a missionary. Such a feeling will not be enough to sustain an individual through trials, Rodgers said, adding even missionaries can grow complacent and stagnant.

“Loving the lost is not the right reason to go to the ends of the Earth,” Rodgers said, saying in his years with the International Mission Board (IMB) he saw numerous people serve for the wrong reasons. “We go because God commands us to go, and we go for His glory. … It has to begin with God’s glory, not with your own sentiment or sentimentality. God’s glory is the reason we go, and God’s glory is the reason we stay.”

Gordon Fort, senior ambassador for the IMB and graduate of Southwestern, led the Thursday morning chapel service with a focus on the power of prayer in the Great Commission, emphasizing the “effectual fervent” prayer mentioned in James 5:16.

Gordon Fort, senior ambassador for the International Mission Board, speaks during a Global Missions Week chapel service.

In relating effectual fervent prayer to the Great Commission, Fort read from Luke 10:2, where Jesus states that the harvest is plentiful, but the workers are few. The answer to the lack of laborers was prayer, Fort said.

Fort said he believes prayer is “the most underutilized weapon in the Great Commission arsenal.” He noted that people do not have to know another language or have a visa or passport to appeal to God on behalf of the peoples of the earth.

“The only thing you need to do is to take their name into the throne room of heaven and prosecute their case as Moses did on Mount Sinai on behalf of the people of Israel,” he said.

Upon his departure from Fort Worth, Fort posted on his social media, “Headed back to Richmond from a really encouraging time on SWBTS campus. A spirit of prayer pervades the campus, and the Spirit is at work. Thankful for Dr. Dockery. I was blessed.”

The World Missions Center and Student Life also hosted the Night of the Nations event, where approximately 220 students got to taste food and hear music from a variety of cultures and also participate in fundraising efforts for upcoming Southwestern student mission trips. Almost $800 was raised during the one-night event.

The Women on Mission also held their monthly meeting in coordination with the Global Missions Week, featuring women who have served in international missions in a variety of ways and locations, some of them for decades.

Women on Mission gathers to hear from missionaries during Global Missions Week.

Each missionary spoke of what their calling to missions looked like, many of them saying it was a long process with baby steps of confirmation by others around them before God opened the door for them to be missionaries. For some it was mere months before they found themselves in a foreign country, while others said it took years.

For Sandra Sieberhagen, wife of Dean Sieberhagen, interim dean of the Roy J. Fish School of Evangelism and Missions, that process from surrendering to God’s will to finding herself in a country in Central Asia took 11 years of preparation. Now that call to reach the lost is a more indirect route, as Sieberhagen said she and her husband now reach the nations by training students.

“It’s the same call because our passion is still for the unreached,” Sieberhagen said. “And [Dean] is just training all you young people to go and be where God is calling. That is our call.”

Tuesday evening, missionaries and students fellowshipped over dinner in the Seelig Banquet Room in an event sponsored by the World Missions Center and designed to inform about 100 students in attendance of the IMB and its recent efforts.

Students hear from the IMB and missionaries during the IMB’s Cultural Evening.

A panel of four missionaries answered questions from students and aspiring missionaries, sharing their experiences in countries overseas as well as in nearby cities. Their mission work included a variety of efforts such as serving refugees, working with exchange students, reaching individuals through food distribution, and even sharing the Gospel through opportunities such as fitness groups.

Throughout the week, these and other missionaries visited classrooms all around the campus to speak about their experiences, and also joined students for lunch in the café and for times of questions about what it looks like to serve as missionaries. Meetings were also available to those interested in learning more about participating in short- or long-term mission trips.