Oct 24, 2019
By Carl Greene
Executive Director
Be careful who you travel with. I wish my mother had taught me that lesson more thoroughly. Traveling with Nick Kersten, SDB Director of Education and History, can be…interesting. While one can use “interesting” on a number of levels when traveling with Nick, I want to focus on intentionality and evangelism.
Nick had lined up our flight arrangements. Nick intentionally selected a window seat and an aisle seat—with an open seat between us. The goal was two-fold. First, we might end up with a vacant seat between us to be able to sprawl outside of our economy-sized seating. Second, to intentionally create space for someone whom God might send who is looking to talk about Jesus.
My intentionality preparing for the flight was to take my Dramamine (traveling with me can be interesting without motion sickness tablets). I was getting all cozy in my seat, preparing for a two-hour nap when Nick’s intentionality kicked in. The full flight did indeed place someone in the seat next to me. A very talkative person who had no care about my drowsy plan for sleep. After some small talk about state of residence, family, and travel, we entered into a conversation about work. When I mentioned the word “Baptist,” I received the reply, “OOhhh, Baptist.” There was not a positive vocal inflection with that statement. It sounded more like I had just sucked all the joy and enthusiasm out of the plane cabin by stating the word “Baptist.”
This presented an open door for some deeper conversation. I said that I would love to hear about why “Baptist” has that connotation. This led to a conversation about faith, Jesus, life struggles, and questions about God. Powerful two-hour conversation thanks to the leading of the Spirit leveraging Nick’s intentionality. And one more thing.
What happened to Nick in this story? Nick got moved at the beginning of our flight to make space for someone who needed that aisle seat. Nick spent the two-hour flight praying for the conversation that had been seeded. Once again, intentionality the whole way through. Intentionality reminiscent of the Book of Acts.
The Book of Acts is a powerful story about the work of the Holy Spirit: in, through, and among the early church. The church was taking steps with great intentionality to advance God’s kingdom through mission and evangelism. The church clearly had a strategy in their outreach, care, and communication—yet a sensitivity to the disruptions and interruptions of life that the Spirit uses to open doors for mission and evangelism. In the end, intentionality involved wise planning, sensitivity to the Spirit, and prayer.
As a General Conference, we are likewise seeking to move forward with intentionality. Our planning surrounds the mission to equip churches to actively advance God’s kingdom. We follow the Spirit’s leading by joining God in the work that He is already doing catalyzing church planting, inspiring church revitalization, stirring up leadership development, and prompting gospel saturation. We are intentionally praying for our churches, our pastors, our church leaders, our SDB Directors and staff, denomination volunteers, and faithful ministry leaders.
It is with intentionality that we are seeking to communicate as a General Conference. This intentionality is through sharing about the ministries we focus on, and increasingly utilizing a variety of modes for our communication. From the standard-bearer Sabbath Recorder publication to blog posts you can follow at https://seventhdaybaptist.org/blog/ to upcoming on-line events such as “Giving Tuesday” (which will take place on the Tuesday after Thanksgiving), there is intentionality in what we communicate, how we communicate it, along with why it is being communicated.
As we seek to be intentional in our next steps as a General Conference, let’s take a page from Nick’s notebook. Keep space in the figurative seat next to you so there is time and energy to communicate and listen well. Be ready to communicate with intentionality—both in speaking as well as reading and listening. Finally, press on praying.
