It happened again the other day. Someone asked me to explain why we chose the term “Loving the World” as our website name. “Didn’t we know that 1 John 2:15 says we should not love the world?”
My answer was simple, “For God so loved the world, that He gave His only Son, that whoever believes in him might be saved.”
No, we don’t love the things of the world: the sin, the hatred, the war, the prejudice, the genocide, the ethnic cleansing, the hunger, the untreated sickness, the lack of clean water, the infant mortality, the child abuse, the broken homes, the modern-day slavery, the child soldiers, the social and economic injustice.
But we do love the world that God sent His Son to die for.
We love people that God loves. We love boys and girls, men and women as God loves them. We want to do anything in our power to share the saving message of Jesus Christ and demonstrate His love by ministering to the hurting people of the world. “Loving the World” is exactly the right website name for our church.
Your gifts to the Global Mission Offering and to the Budget of First Baptist Church support missionaries around the world and allow the people of the local church to become missionaries as well. Career missionaries on the foreign field and the local believers who take their testimonies and talents to the mission fields of Athens, Texas, America and around the world, are carrying out the of the Great Commission.
Click the buttons below to see what mission opportunities are coming soon or scroll down and click on the country flag to see what is happening in each country.
Sincerely, Steve Akin Minister of Missions