BRANSON – Missouri Baptist Convention President Wesley Vance exhorted messengers at the MBC annual meeting to let the people in their communities see Jesus powerfully through their preaching and witness.
“Our churches need godly men and women who possess a warrior’s ethos,” said Vance, who serves as executive pastor at Crossway Baptist Church in Springfield. These churches, he said, need people “that will stand in the middle of their community, not to flex some church program or new church activity, but to show them Jesus.
“We need our state, we need our community, we need our cities to see Jesus,” he added.
Vance preached from Acts 4, a story that gives Missouri Baptists “a picture of what happens in a dark and wicked world where godly men stand … with boldness and conviction and they say, ‘Let me show you, Jesus!’”
In the story, the apostles Peter and John come across a lame man who asks for alms, and they respond by showing him the power of Jesus to heal and to save. In the name of Jesus, the lame man was healed, and he praised God, leaping with joy.
“That’s what happens when Jesus touches you,” Vance said. “He changes you. He brings a joy in your life.”
Afterward, Peter and John get arrested for having healed this man in Jesus’s name. The religious leaders and scholars of the Jews, however, were amazed that Peter and John were uneducated, but they realized they had been with Jesus.
“These (Jewish leaders) are the scholars that knew how to slice the jot and shave the tittle,” Vance said. “But they did not know how to see the Savior. They stood in contrast to these soul-filled, spirit-filled, preachers of Jesus, men called ‘untrained and uneducated.’
“Hear me, today,” Vance added. “We have a problem. The creep of credentialing has infiltrated our pulpits, and it has neutered our pastors. … I fear too many have become too schooled for the common man. You speak a language they don’t speak, only to try to sound scholarly.”
While education isn’t bad, he said, Missouri Baptists need to rediscover the importance of the presence of Jesus, found in the prayer closet and in the Word of God.
“The Word of God comes with power. This is our power. This is what we preach. And when you see the power of this Word pierce a stone cold heart or feed that starved saint, it opens your eyes and enlivens your ministry in ways that you would never imagine. Oh, hear me, we need men of God who will preach the Word of God, because they’ve been in the presence of God.”
To watch Vance’s sermon online, visit https://mobaptist.org/annual-meeting/videos/.