We had an enjoyable Valentine’s Day yesterday. It all began with wonderful worship services at both of our campuses on “I Love My Church Day.” God’s Spirit was powerful, Jesus was honored, and decisions were made for Christ. Praise God!

Due to weather challenges nationwide, we had the privilege to have a segment of our worship led by Tommy Walker from California. He has written great songs like, “Hallelujah, What a Savior!” “He Knows My Name,” and “We Will Remember.” Oh, how God used him. Our people loved his spirit and leadership. He flew in to help Josh with last week’s Music Metro Conference and with snow everywhere, he ended up being grounded here all weekend. God had him here for a purpose. Our God is sovereign. Praise God!

Jeana and I enjoyed a quiet lunch on Sunday, just the two of us, at a local restaurant. It was not too crowded and we just took the opportunity to celebrate our love for one another over this quiet luncheon. We have loved each other as husband and wife for over 33 years. Praise God!

I am thankful for each of you. Please do me a special favor this week: Pray for me daily. I have much before me this week as I prepare for my major GCR Progress Report on Monday night, February 22.

Please pause for a moment and pray right now for the meetings of the Great Commission Resurgence Task Force of the Southern Baptist Convention. Also, call upon others to pray with you throughout the entire day on Wednesday, and on Thursday until 2:00 p.m.

This morning I leave to go to Little Rock to speak at the Arkansas Baptist State Convention Evangelism Conference. It is being held at the First Baptist Church in Sherwood, Arkansas. I am scheduled to preach at 2:15 p.m. Please pray for me as I preach at this very important annual meeting. It is attended mostly by pastors, but is a significant gathering due to it being attended by leaders concentrating on winning others to Christ.

<strong>As soon as I complete that preaching assignment, I depart for San Antonio for our Great Commission Resurgence meetings. These meetings are our most significant meetings thus far in this challenging task. We will continue in our process of working through how our convention of 50,000 churches and congregations can more faithfully and effectively fulfill the Great Commission.

If Southern Baptist churches are going to embrace the vision of presenting the gospel of Jesus Christ to every person in the world and make disciples of all the nations, we will have to change the way we do some things. This is what Southern Baptists say they desire to do; therefore, we are working through a lot of matters that will help us do this more successively. As Christ-followers, how can we not embrace this biblical and worthy vision? I believe we will, but for us to move to that point, we have many difficult decisions that must be made. Please friends, pray for us like never before.

Our “21 Day Journey With God” in prayer and fasting concluded last night at sunset. God has shared many things with me in this season and I trust He has done the same with you. In this season set aside to pursue God, our God has been faithful to us. I am so very grateful.

Thanks to each of you who set aside these days for some very concentrated time with God. Now as we continue in our walk with Christ, you will see God bring into reality in days to come, many of those requests you laid before Him humbly. May His power be made known in and through our lives like never before.

Call upon others to join us in prayer for this week of Great Commission Resurgence meetings in San Antonio.

The letter below is being sent today to just under 6,000 GCR Prayer Partners, people who have committed to pray for a Great Commission Resurgence in the Southern Baptist Convention. If you are not already a part of that group, I want to encourage you to join them in prayer at this critical time. Please read below for a message about an extremely important upcoming meeting.

Your Great Commission Task Force has listened to Southern Baptists, gathered as much information as possible, asked the tough questions, gone through volumes of information, and has really sought to hear what Southern Baptists desire to do to advance the Great Commission in our generation. Equally, we have been before God to seek His will. Now we enter the season and the crucible of decision-making. The pressure is on and the test is real. For the past three months, these decisions have been in process, and in our next meeting we will finalize and make many difficult decisions. This is why we need you.

On Tuesday through Thursday, January 26-28, our Great Commission Resurgence Task Force will be meeting for our our most significant moment in this journey. As our process goes forward, we will be presenting our report to the upcoming meeting of the Southern Baptist Convention’s Executive Committee on February 22-23. While additions or revisions to this report are probable before the final report is made in June at the Orlando Southern Baptist Convention, the release of it in February will give Southern Baptists four months to gain clarity and have their questions addressed.

Therefore, I am asking you to give some concentrated prayer time for this upcoming meeting. Please ask your prayer ministries to pray for us. Our need for prayer has never been greater. Please consider even praying for us during the various segments of our meeting. Our meeting begins on Tuesday at 3:00 p.m. and concludes on Thursday at 2:00 p.m. We will meet in the mornings, afternoons, and evenings of each day. We would appreciate various groups within your church having continual prayer for our GCR Team during these hours.

How can you pray? We need God’s leadership and will to be manifested. We need the wisdom of God regarding every situation. We need complete clarity on presenting our convention of churches a compelling vision for the future. We need to abound in spiritual unity as we move through this significant meeting. We need courage to make the decisions that will truly advance the Great Commission through the ministries of Southern Baptists. We need God’s protection upon our own lives, our families, and the ministries we are a part of, because dealing with major Great Commission issues brings strong spiritual warfare.

Please continue to enlist people to be a part of our www.pray4gcr.com prayer team. We have just under 6,000 people who are prayer partners with us daily. We would love to see hundreds more join us in this daily commitment to pray for a Great Commission Resurgence to occur in and through the Southern Baptist Convention.

Additionally, please share with your congregation that Dr. Johnny Hunt, the President of our Convention, has issued a “Call to Prayer” for Sunday, January 31. He is appealing to every Southern Baptist Christ-follower and church to pray for the future of our convention of churches on this day.

May God bless you wonderfully for being our parters in prayer.

The Great Commission Resurgence Task Force of the Southern Baptist Convention is very committed to communicating our report in the February 22-23 Executive Committee Meeting. It is our goal to communicate as much of our report as possible. We want each Southern Baptist to have time to understand, pray about, and hopefully embrace our recommendations. This is why we are delivering as much of our report as possible by this February meeting.

Our GCR Team has worked very hard. Our meetings have been tedious and long. Our emails and correspondence have been ever consuming. We have listened and listened to Southern Baptists. We have learned so much.  Due diligence has been practiced in every way. While all of this is true, it has been an incredible joy to serve in this capacity.

There is an ever-increasing excitement about what we are going to share with our convention. We are very committed to seeing and experiencing this Great Commission Resurgence. Therefore, join us in prayer daily. Register your commitment to pray with us at www.pray4gcr.com.

The urgency is upon us. Lostness in the world abounds. The gospel is the answer. The time is now.

Pray for us as we prepare for this February