This week The Southern Baptist Theological Seminary began their first ever Great Commission Lecture Series; there are several more lectures to come please check that link for updates over the next month.  Starting the series off was David Platt, lead pastor of the Church at Brook Hills in Birmingham, Alabama.  In his lecture he offered the following criticism of the lack of biblical vision in SBC churches and followed it up will a practical exhortation to recover the mission of God.

“When you ask a pastor to describe his vision and we say things like, ‘my vision is to have this many hundred or this many thousand people in church, or to have this many buildings,’ when we say things like that we show that somewhere along the way we have lost our pursuit of Christ in the pursuit of stuff and the church. Christ should be our vision. . . .  One of the greatest challenges that I, and the staff that I lead, face is trying to reorient our thinking: the purpose of the staff is not to plan events or to provide services. The purpose of the staff, of church leaders, is to equip people, to build people, to love Christ and proclaim the glory of Christ to the nations” (emphasis added).

An article by the Towers Online is available here and MP3s of the lectures are available below.

·         “The Presence of Christ in the Great Commission”

·         “The Command of Christ in the Great Commission”

·         “The Authority of Christ in the Great Commission”