WMU leader challenges women to make new century an ‘epic’ one for missions

The Southern Baptist Woman’s Missionary Union has a simple goal for the
new century – to be an epic missions organization, Wanda Lee emphasized.

The Southern Baptist Woman’s Missionary Union has a simple goal for the
new century – to be an epic missions organization, Wanda Lee emphasized.

 

Webster Dictionary defines epic as “extending beyond the
usual or ordinary … heroic,” noted Lee, executive director of the national
Woman’s Missionary Union.

 

Author Leonard Sweet describes an epic church with four adjectives,
Lee said in an address to the Woman’s Missionary Union executive board.
Those adjectives include:

 

E- for experiential.

 

P- for participatory.

 

I – for image driven.

 

C- for connected.

 

“Leonard Sweet’s challenge to those of us in leadership
in the church of the 21st century is to … move from just doing church to being
the church in new ways,” Lee said.

 

Lee said WMU has realized the importance of this truth –
and has spent a lot of time and energy creating new models for engaging the
church in the missions lifestyle.

 

However, research alone does not have all the answers, Lee
pointed out. “To really reach this audience, the bottom line is that each
one of us, the family of faith, will have to develop the kind of passion for
Christ felt by the first-century Christians,” Lee told the women leaders.

 

“We need a renewed passion for Christ and his mission
and allow that passion to drive the way we minister and witness in the 21st-century
world,.”

 

At the same time, Woman’s Missionary Union also must realize
that “if the people in the pew do not realize they are personally responsible
for the Great Commission, then the best organization and the most advanced missions
awareness is a wasted effort on our part,” Lee stressed.

 

“We must become a passionate epic organization at heart
if we want to communicate the missions message effectively. We are the leaders
of the greatest missionary organization for the support and spread of the gospel
that there is.”

 

Long-range plans already are in place to help Woman’s
Missionary Union become an “epic” organization, Lee noted. “There
is a concerted effort for ongoing education in magazines and we have begun the
process to work on the web. Project HELP has been our most intentional way to
connect to international missionaries and do strategic missions work overseas
in partnership with the International Mission Board.”

 

However, to continue making the goals a reality, “we must
go back to the basics,” the national leader explained.

 

“If we want to get the passion for missions back, we need
to follow three basic objectives,” Lee said.

 

Those objectives are to:

 

•Capture the attention of the local church for missions.

 

•Establish Woman’s Missionary Union as the premier
missions resource for the local church.

 

•Ensure the continuity of the WMU mission. (BP)