November 13, 2024
by Wes Tucker
The next few weeks are an exciting time for Tri-Cities and are always some of my favorite! Neighbors & Nations begins this Sunday. This is our semi-annual missions emphasis designed to equip and mobilize us for gospel advancement beginning next door and reaching around the world. There are all kinds of events and resources to help you grow in this area. The Neighbors & Nations page has all those details and RSVP information.
But why? Why do we take time a few times a year to focus on gospel advancement? Simply, Jesus called, commissioned, empowered, and commanded His followers to obey the Great Commission.
“And Jesus came and said to them, “All authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me. Go therefore and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, teaching them to observe all that I have commanded you. And behold, I am with you always, to the end of the age.”
– Matthew 28:18-20
Making disciples isn’t something we add to our busy lives; our lives should be marked by disciple-making. Our mission is to advance the gospel across the street and around the world, and every Jesus follower can and should be involved in advancing the gospel:
We can Pray. We can Give. We can Go.
This week I want to challenge and prepare you to pray for the good news of the gospel to be advanced by the power of the Holy Spirit. We fulfill the Great Commission in His power, not our own.
I want to introduce you to a new resource on our website – tcbchurch.org/gopray. This page will provide ways you can pray for individuals to come to Christ, TCBC Go Trip teams, partnering organizations and missionaries, unreached peoples, and much more.
For the next two weeks, this page is also the home of a special two-week Neighbors & Nations Reading and Prayer Guide. This guide will lead you through a Bible passage to read and meditate on and a principle to pray for. It will also give you a tangible way to pray for some TCBC members or partners by watching a short video, and then prompt you to pray for them. Bookmark this page and set an alarm daily to visit the page and pray together with your church family.
You’ll notice each of those passages, principles, and prayer points all lead us to consider the importance of healthy leaders. That’s because our emphasis for this Neighbors & Nations is the Go Pursuit of Train Leaders.
We train leaders because healthy leaders are essential for growing healthy Jesus followers, essential for building healthy churches, and essential for advancing the good news of the gospel around the world.
For the next few weeks, lean into the things our church is doing to help us grow in advancing the gospel through the training of healthy leaders. Take advantage of all the resourcing and focused attention being given to this worthy pursuit of Train Leaders.
Every believer is called, commissioned, empowered, and commanded to go!
Wes Tucker
Elder
Wes Tucker serves on staff as our Connections Pastor. He served in various leadership roles for six years at TCBC before coming on staff in the fall of 2013. He earned a Master of Arts in Church Ministries degree through The Southern Baptist Theological Seminary while participating in Cohort 1 of the Tri-Cities Leadership Training Program. Wes and his wife Jennifer have four children: Cameron, Grayson, Hayden, and Caroline.