Earlier today the trustees of the Southern Baptist Convention’s International Mission Board elected David Platt to serve as president.
This seems like a historic occasion—God putting things in place to put one of our generation’s great missions mobilizers at the helm of one of the great sending institutions for fulfilling the Great Commission.
Russell Moore comments:
I have been praying for a long, long time that he would be elected. Our IMB president must be one who can drive our missions focus in a new way for a new era. It’s not enough that Southern Baptists’ global missions leader motivates us all to give and to go (although he must do that). He must be someone who can connect from the Scriptures how the Great Commission, and especially our global Great Commission responsibilities, are the urgent concern of all of us, Most Christians know that Matthew 28 and Acts 1 command us to go, to reach the unreached with the gospel. We need though to be constantly reminded how every text, from Genesis 1 to Revelation 22 is connected to the mission of reaching the nations.
In a rapidly shifting American culture, this means modeling a vision of why it is that cooperating together for this task is connected to everything else that we do. We need to activate and enthuse a new generation for the adventure of reaching the world with the gospel.
You can read Moore’s full comments here.
Update: Here is Platt on video talking about the transition:
