(Photo by the Publisher)

Rev. Ken Lawson and his son, Marion Lawson, Principal of Pickens High School.


        God had only one plan to reach the world. He did not have a backup plan. And you and I are the plan. When we do not accept the responsibility and the privilege to be His spokespersons for the world, we fail God, and we fail others. We fail the world in which we live. This mandate, this command, this order came from the lips of our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ, and it is crystal clear. The world evangelization has been entrusted to you and to me in our day. I cannot do it alone. You cannot do it alone. No church can do it alone. No association can do it alone. But if we would do our part, we can do it together.
        The Great Commission verses are extremely important. Search the Scripture sometime, and see how many of God’s teachings, how many of his miracles, how many of his parables are in all four Gospel accounts plus the book of Acts. There are not many. The Great Commission was extremely important, because the Holy Spirit laid upon the heart of all those men to write it. It’s a little different in some places, but the sense is the same — we are God’s plan to reach the world..
        I wonder, sometimes, what part of the Great Commission we do not understand. Is it that we have not, as individuals and sometimes as churches, accepted God’s command? I think, sometimes, that we incorrectly believe that we can pay professionals to do our part. Most people don’t hear a preacher, and most people don’t hear an evangelist. They hear us, as we live, as we work, as we play, and as we go. You and I are the only preachers and the only evangelists that many people who live around us will ever see and will ever know.
        There are thousands of churches who do not baptize one person in an entire year. When a church goes a whole year and does not baptize one person, something is wrong in that church.
        If I were a pastor, and God’s Holy Spirit did not give me enough power and enough wisdom and enough guidance to find one lost soul to help to come to know Jesus as their personal Saviour, I would think I was in the wrong business. 
        It takes Pastors. But I think song leaders, deacons, and Sunday School teachers ought to be soul winners. 
        When the church gets on fire, the church begins to bring people to the Lord Jesus Christ. If a church catches on fire, somebody is going to come see what happened. When there is a fire, people want to see what is going on. 
        If we go to our churches on fire for the Lord and ask the power of the Holy Spirit to come upon us and show us the lost people around us, and we begin to witness to them with the power of God and with the love of God and with the compassion of God and with the mercy of God, you wouldn’t need to bring an evangelist.
        I thank God for WMU. If it weren’t for WMU, I’m not sure we’d have a Baptist church anymore. And some preachers who think they know everything are trying to do away with WMU. They’re going to ‘cut their head off’, friend. These ladies raise money for Lottie Moon and pray for the missionaries every day and teach the little children in the Sunbeam Band, which, I think, is now called Mission Friends. It was in Sunbeam Band that I learned ‘red and yellow, black and white, they are precious in his sight, Jesus loves the little children of the world.’ It was in Sunbeams that I learned that I was to be a light for the world. I learned it right, and I hope I never get away from it, because I believe, with all of my heart, that God didn’t make junk.
        The Bible says that God is no respecter of persons. I’ve been around this world several times. As long as God gives me breath and a dollar in my pocket, I’m going to go somewhere for the Lord every year.
        I go to the hospital to see people who are dying. I do more funerals, perhaps, than anybody around Inman, because my Daddy pastored those people for 23 years, and I’ve come home, and they know me, and I love them. 
        You can be a missionary. You ought to be a missionary. If you’re not a missionary, you need a missionary, because every one of us is sharing the Gospel, either in a good way or in a bad way, to the world. 
        We’ve become everything but the church. Far too often today, the church is a social club. It’s a restaurant. It’s an athletic club. It’s the Grand Ole Opry. And, in some cases, it’s almost a nightclub. We promote Upward Soccer, Upward Basketball, and Upward cheerleading, and our soul-winning is going downward. 
        We win fewer people to Jesus Christ. I’ll tell you what’s wrong. We’ve got our emphasis in the wrong place. We need to get back to the Great Commission, and we need to go out and win the world for the Lord Jesus Christ. 
        But try to get some of the same people who paid $1,000 to go on a mission trip to do missions at home. It’s not nearly as glamorous to work in the Spanish mission once a week as it is to go overseas for a week.
        Don’t get me wrong. Many of these things I’ve mentioned are good outreach helps, and they sometimes result in decisions for Christ. But the danger comes when Satan allows us to think that doing good things can replace doing the best thing. And the best thing that you can ever do is to lead someone to the Lord. 
        There’s a young man I’m working with in the community now. We went to school together. He’s a blasphemer. He doesn’t even get along with his own family. He even gets mad when somebody does something good for his sister. I’m his friend. I love him. I go to see him. I sit in the yard and talk with him. I’m sincere when I say I love him. But do you know why I’m really there? I don’t want to go to heaven without him. As much as I love that man, as a brother, what a terrible thing it would be if he died without Jesus. I’ve spent many afternoons and evenings with him, cultivating his friendship and trying to lead him to the Lord. What if I didn’t care about his soul? What if I gave up on him? Friends, God never gave up on me. He never gave up on you. He’s still working on me.
        I remember that, when I was a little boy, my dad was 6’4”. I was the runt in the family. I would say, "Dad, I’m getting tall," and I would stand on my tiptoes and stretch for all I was worth. Dad would say, ‘Let’s see how big you are.’ He’d roll that big, long arm out, and I would get under there, and I can remember the day when I just barely reached under his arm. I said, "Dad, I’m just about there." But do you know what? I never measured up. I never got to be 6’4”. But one day, when I stand before the King of kings and Lord of lords, He’s going to say, ‘Well done.’ I’ll never measure up to Jesus, but, praise God, I’m not what I used to be. I pray to God that He’ll continue to use me in order that I might win lost people for Jesus.
        What did Jesus say the Commission was? In Luke 19:10, He simply said this: "I come to seek and to save that which was lost." And He did a great job of soul winning. He went to a lot of banquets and did a lot of teaching, but He never lost sight of the lostness of man. And in the shadows of the old rugged cross, He reached out to a Samaritan woman, He reached out to a tax collector who climbed a tree to see him, He reached out to a crazy man among the tombs.
        You and I need to look at Jesus. I spend time in the Old Testament. I love the Old Testament. Every time I go to the hospital, I read a Psalm to the sick. I love the New Testament. I love the writings of Paul, the Book of the Revelation. But let me tell you, friends, when I stake my life and my ministry, I look at my Lord. What a Saviour, oh hallelujah. What compassion. What love. He reached out to the unclean, to the rich and the poor, to the Samaritan and the Jew, and He reached out to you and to me.
        I’m not advocating that we get away from the Baptist trinity – budgets, buildings, and baptisms. I believe in all of that, but I believe we ought to have baptisms first. If we get to baptizing people, and we get to winning our neighborhood and our communities and our associations to the Lord, we won’t have to worry about the budgets and the buildings. If people start getting saved, and people get excited about the fire that’s burning in the preacher’s heart and the deacons’ hearts and the WMU ladies’ hearts, and all the other people’s hearts, friends, let me tell you, they’re going to give and support. But where they don’t see anything happening, preachers will be begging.
        I have been a pastor now for 25 years. I’ve never preached a sermon just on tithing over five times in my ministry. I believe everything belongs to God. I believe that, when people get on fire for the Lord, and have the love of God and power of the Holy Spirit filling their heart, they’re going to give — not because you beg them to, not because they have to, but because God has put in them a cheerful, willing heart, and they want to be a part of what God is doing in the world. 
        I believe that, when we stand before the Lord, we’ll discover that God doesn’t measure like you and I measure. I’m convinced, with all of my heart, that there were women in the church who worked in the mill all their lives and who gave sacrificially to the Kingdom of God and witnessed to their family and to friends, and I believe that one day they’re going to go into the kingdom before me. I believe that.
        Let me encourage you, if you come from a church that may not be large. Don’t worry. You be the lighthouse that God allows you to be. Friends, reach out. The harvest is plenteous, but the laborers are few.
        We’ve become today, in the Baptist church, a people who love entertainment more than repentance. We love recreation more than visitation. You can always draw a crowd to a feast. Jesus drew 5,000. But, at the cross, it was the WMU, and one scared apostle, John. When are we going to wake up to the true mission of the ministry of every New Testament believer and every New Testament church? 
        We go more, but we’re doing less. We give more, but we are winning fewer to the Lord. Why do we have more church members today who know how to use computers, cell phones, DVD players, and digital cameras than know the books of the Bible? I’m concerned when we know more about new inventions than we know about leading a person to the Lord. That’s a sin, and I do not believe that God will honor that forever. 
        We have gyms in our churches to care for our bodies, but our people starve for the Word of God. We have too many people downloading their sermons from the internet rather than ‘downloading’ from the Holy Spirit. If a Pastor is worth his salt, he’s going to be in the Word of God. He’s going to be talking to the heavenly Father. He’s going to be feeding the people. And the Holy Spirit is going to say, "Preacher, here’s your sermon for Sunday." 
        Why do we sing choruses which sometimes have no theological fruit? And yet we alter our old hymns to make them more appealing. What difference does it make whether I was a 'wretch' or a 'worm'? I was lost, and I didn’t know Jesus. It doesn’t matter to me whether you sing ‘wretch’ or ‘worm.’ The main idea is to know that you’re lost without Jesus and that you need a Saviour. And if a song doesn’t teach the theological truths of God’s eternal Word, we ought not to sing it. Lost doesn’t feel good, no matter what you call it. Why do we applaud our soloists and our choirs and pray for our preachers, when our altars are stuffed with flowers, and nobody gets right with God.
        It’s high time that we, as Christians and churches and associations, get back to the basics. Acts 1:8, along with John 3:16, is as basic as you can get. It’s the heart of what we’re to be about as Christians. And when Acts 1:8 is no longer our mission statement for our church or our personal life or association, then, God help us, because we need revival. You and I can hire as many missionaries as we like and put as many people on the staff of our churches as we like, but, when you stand before Almighty God, God is going to ask you what you personally have done for Him. Acts 1:8 speaks to you and me just as surely as it speaks to the Pastor or the missionary — to ask God to help the message of our lives and our lips to proclaim the message of John 3:16 with the methodology expressed in Acts 1:8. May we go back to our precious churches. I mean that, with all of my heart, because anything that God established with His precious blood is precious. I hope you feel your church is precious. 
        As I grow older, I say to God, ‘If You’ll just let me live, there are a few more countries I’d like to go to, to share the Gospel.’ I wouldn’t stay here, because long ago, I learned that 95 out of every 100 evangelical preachers are in America. The God that I know would never put 95 out of every 100 evangelical preachers in America.
        God placed me, a country boy, in a city of 4.5 million, and He helped me to love it. I love the traffic. I love the sights. I love the sounds. I love the smells. I love the food. But most of all, I love the people. They came from all over the world, just like I learned when I was a little boy, "red and yellow, black and white, they are precious in His sight." God brought them, one by one, sometimes a family, to saving faith in His Son, my Saviour, Jesus Christ. 
        Acts 1:8: You shall receive power, after that, the Holy Spirit is come upon you: and you shall be my witnesses. 
        Let us thank God for what He has done through us, not content to rest on this year’s performance, but ask God to so richly fill us with His power and with His purpose, that we reach this community, our state, our nation, our world for the Lord. 
        May God richly bless you. And, if I don’t see you again down here, I love the river. I will probably be by the river of life where the fruit grows in all seasons. Look me up. We’ll share some stories of the ones you led to Jesus.