This week, we continue our look at the GCR report with Challenges for Individual Families.  Again, I would ask you to read these and prayerfully consider how they might apply as a challenge to your family.

Challenges for Individual Families
14.  Emphasize biblical gender roles with believing fathers taking the lead in modeling Great Commission Christianity and taking the primary responsibility for the spiritual welfare of their families.

15.  Recognize that parents have the primary responsibility of educating their children and helping them to cultivate a Christian worldview way of thinking and living.

16.  Build gospel saturated homes that see children as a gift from God and our initial mission field. Consider, in this context, the vital ministries of adoption and orphan care.

17.  Make prayer for and the evangelism and discipleship of children a family priority that begins with parents and is assisted by local churches.

18.  Develop strategies as a family for praying for, serving, and sharing the gospel with neighbors, coworkers, and others with whom family members come into regular contact.

19.  Adopt a different unreached people group each month and pray as a family 1) for IMB missionaries working with the people group, 2) for the conversion, baptism and discipling of countless individuals within the people group, and 3) for the establishment of biblical churches among the people group.

20.  Adopt a different North American church plant each month and pray as a family 1) for the church’s leadership team, 2) for the conversion, baptism and discipling of countless individuals in the church’s region, and 3) for the birthing of future church plants from the church.

21.  Spend a family vacation participating in a local church or association sponsored mission trip.

22.  Consider setting up a mission’s savings account for each of your children that would enable them to spend six months to a year in a North America or International Missions context soon after graduating from high school.

SOURCE: Morningview Baptist Church

The section begins, “We hold to an ecclesiology that honors and affirms both autonomy and cooperation.  The Great Commission Resurgence Task Force is well aware of this, and we realize that we cannot direct individual Christians, local churches, associations or state conventions to take any particular or specific action. This is as it should be.  However, our doctrine of the church does not prevent us from challenging and encouraging, admonishing and advising, one another at all levels of SBC life for greater passion and effectiveness in pursuing the Great Commission. We are a convention of churches with a missional vision to present the Gospel of Jesus Christ to every person in the world and to make disciples of all the nations. With all of this in mind, we wish to put forth the following as challenges for the future of the SBC that we might bring greater glory to the Lord Jesus as we seek to disciple all nations in the fulfillment of Matthew 28:18-20.”

Challenges for Individual Christians:
1.  Return to God in deep repentance of and brokenness over sin, denying self, and coming to God with complete humility.
2.  Commit to the total and absolute Lordship of Jesus Christ in every area of your life, understanding that Christ’s lordship is inseparable from all aspects of the believer’s life, including family obligations, business and profession, and recreational or leisure pursuits. We especially call on men to respond to this challenge.
3.  Devote yourself to a radical pursuit of the Great Commission in the context of obeying the Great Commandments of loving God and loving others.
4.  Participate in a local church sponsored evangelism training class sometime during 2011 and make this a regular component of the discipleship process in your life.
5.  Develop strategies as an individual for praying for, serving, sharing the gospel and discipling neighbors, coworkers, and others with whom you come into regular contact.
6.  Bear witness to the Gospel through personal evangelism, seeing every individual as a sinner in need of the salvation that comes through Jesus Christ alone.
7.  Participate in a North American or international mission trip sponsored by your church or association at least once every four years.
8.  Grow in giving as a faithful financial stewardship with at least 10% of your income going to your local church. However, see 10% as a place to begin in grace giving but not the place to stop.
9.  Determine to exercise a greater level of stewardship through estate planning and planned giving, leaving a percentage of your estate to your local church, the Cooperative Program, and to a faithful Baptist entity such as NAMB, IMB, a Baptist college, or our seminaries.
10.  Devote yourself to a radical pursuit of the Great Commission in the context of obeying the Great Commandments of loving God and loving others.
11.  Give serious consideration to adoption and orphan care as a component of Great Commission living.
12.  Determine to develop a well-rounded Christian worldview that allows you to clearly articulate both what you believe and why you believe.
13.  Repent of any and all sin that has prevented you from being fully used by our Lord in fulfilling the Great Commission. This includes sins of idolatry, pride, selfish ambition, hatred, racism, bigotry and other sins of the flesh that dishonor the name of Jesus.

SOURCE: Morningview Baptist Church