A Great Commission People

Southern Baptists were moved to organize as a convention when they realized that the challenge of world wide missions required resources that most churches alone would never have.   When they organized the Convention in 1845, in Augusta, Georgia, they created the “Foreign Mission Board” and appointed their first foreign missionaries.  Soon after, they formed the “Home Mission Board,” primarily charged to use cooperative resources to take the gospel into western lands being settled on the American continent.  Seminary training, literature production and distribution, and other important ministries likewise were developed by the young convention, but missions was the driving purpose of the Convention.   The promotion of these mission causes, largely sponsored by women who formed the “Woman’s Missionary Union,” kept the cause of world missions and national missions in the sight of the churches, including the smallest rural church.   It emphasized the missionary education of children and youth, and this contributed greatly to the large number of missionary volunteers ready to meet the personnel needs of an ever-expanding denominational missions cause.