Grazing in the Missional Grassroots

Mega Focus Cities during Bold Mission Thrust

Photo by CHUTTERSNAP on Unsplash

Grazing in the Missional Grassroots

I did it. I was the one! It has been 47 years now. It is time to reveal my action and motivation.

I was the only one I could hear call out the word “No” during a voice vote. Then I heard the moderator say, “Well, there is always one.”

The scene was the annual meeting of the Southern Baptist Convention (hereafter SBC) in Atlanta, GA, June 13-15, 1978. President Jimmy Allen was presiding.

The motion on the floor would endorse the national goals for the new missional effort known as Bold Mission Thrust. It envisioned serving as a transformational effort through the year 2000. It sought to take the Good News of Jesus to everyone in the world.

It included evangelism, church planting, compassion ministry, and discipleship development, among other things.

I fully supported this effort, in general. I was Southern Baptist to the core. I believed passionately in the role of our denominational movement.

Except . . .

I did not believe the goals of the effort should be organizational goals for denominational entities. We should empower the movement not the institutionalized entities that support the movement.

I believed in grassroots goals surrounding God’s empowerment of local congregations and contextual ministries. The denominational structure should empower these efforts.

Goals to make the denomination successful missed the mark. The best ones would focus on the missional grassroots. Helping congregations and ministries engage in significant Kingdom ministry. Moving them towards total surrender to God’s call within their context.

The national and international Bold Mission Thrust goals failed to address this.

My Missional Passion

Growing up in this congregational polity denomination, I always felt the most important focus for our movement is the grassroots. The three dimensional structure of our denomination should support this. Participate in God’s empowerment as it happens locally and contextually.

Not take the leadership initiative away from them. Not seek to get congregations and ministries to enable the denominational structure. It just made sense to me. It was the mantra for all my spiritual and strategic efforts.

Here is the first of several examples of how I remained committed to this approach. I believe in many situations significant Kingdom progress was realized. I share them as illustrations as you consider grazing in the missional grassroots.

The Voice of the Holy Spirit

To hear the spiritual and strategic convictions I share, you need to know one theological position I claim.

The voice of the Holy Spirit is clearest and can most deeply be understand in the local context. It may be somewhat clear in a regional, national, or international missional agency. But effectively applying the Holy Spirit’s voice can only be understood within a local context.

Mega Focus Cities

Three years after the Bold Mission Thrust goals were adopted, as a 30-year-old, I was asked to work for the SBC national missions agency. My assignment was to develop the next round of strategy for bold progress in the 50 largest urban areas in the continental United States.

This is not something I did alone. It began with the small team of people to whom I was responsible and accountable within this missions agency. They had the authority. I had the role of developing and implementing the strategy.

Once Mega Focus Cities launched, it involved many of the national and regional organizations of the SBC in support of the effort.

Our strategic framework had many moving parts, but the concept was simple. It was characterized by three ideas.

First, let’s gather everyone in the SBC directly related to the missional strategy for an urban area for multiple days for each urban area. Work out how to resource the next five or more years of strategy implementation in each urban area.

Second, a strategy must first be developed for each urban area to offer to the gathered resource persons. This happened before the gathering mentioned above. Initially we worked on four urban areas per year. After New York and Miami served a pilot year for the strategy. The strategy must be locally developed and deeply owned by the congregations and their local denominational organization.

Those who could hear the voice of the Holy Spirit clearest.

Third, increase the capacity of congregations and associations to implement effective strategies. To engage in continuous learning with leaders from other urban areas. This happened both before and after the resource gathering.

Long-term, lift up the grassroots people as the experts rather than claiming the national and regional staff were the experts.

The idea was to invest resources in the missional grassroots. It worked. Even during the year of planning measurable increases in gospel penetration took place.

Next: Missional Grassroots Church Planting

Copyright 2025 by George W. Bullard Jr. January 15, 2025 Edition

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