FRANKFORT, Ky. – As pastors and lay leaders left Buck Run Baptist Church in Frankfort, Ky., on Monday afternoon, Feb. 24, another stop on the Who’s Your One Tour drew to a close. This week marked the one-year anniversary of the Who’s Your One evangelism emphasis, which launched February 26, 2019.
“We have seen here in Kentucky, which was evidenced at Buck Run, there has been great momentum around Who’s Your One here in our state,” said Rob Patterson, the evangelism team leader for the Kentucky Baptist Convention. “Many of our churches have rallied around it saying, ‘this is who we are, and this is what we need to be doing.'”
The tour has been one avenue of the Who’s Your One emphasis that is designed to help pastors and their congregations begin praying for and reaching out to at least one person whom they know needs to respond to the gospel.
“It is amazing how this has become a real, genuine movement thanks to Southern Baptists across North America,” said Johnny Hunt, senior vice president of evangelism and leadership at the North American Mission Board (NAMB). “Let’s continue to be faithful and remember to keep the main thing, the main thing. Let’s focus on reaching our family members, friends and neighbors with the gospel.”
More than 27,000 Who’s Your One resource kits have been distributed to pastors and churches across North America. Nearly 23,000 people have sent in commitments to pray for and share with their ‘one’ through whosyourone.com. With 13 tour events now completed, there are 16 more tour stops remaining in 2020, and more are scheduled for 2021.
Who’s Your One also has thousands of people talking on social media. There have been 10.3 million impressions and 1.1 million engagements on social media.
Who’s Your One launched in coordination with J.D. Greear, Southern Baptist Convention president and pastor of The Summit Church in Durham, N.C. Greear has focused his presidency on a “Gospel Above All” theme and has made Who’s Your One a key element of that emphasis.
Pastor Nick Drake of Richland Baptist Church in Kingdom City, Mo., began preaching through a Who’s Your One sermon series at the beginning of February to build momentum in advance of Easter Sunday.
“My hope and prayer is that God would use this to start a lifestyle and pattern of disciple-making amongst all the believers in our church so that more and more people will become disciples who are making disciples,” said Drake.
The normative-sized, rural church has seen a number of people select a ‘one’ and begin praying and sharing their faith, Drake said.
In Madisonville, Texas, Joshua Crutchfield, pastor of First Baptist Church, launched a Who’s Your One emphasis so members would start praying for and inviting people to church. They will have a special evangelistic service where Shane Pruitt, NAMB’s next gen evangelism director, will preach in April.
“Every Sunday school had a prayer guide in their seat,” Crutchfield said. “At the end of the service, everyone was given a bookmark and an explanation that for the next 30 days we were going to be praying for our one.”
The church used the Who’s Your One graphics to hang banners and create a whiteboard where people can write the first name or initials of their ‘one.’ They close every service by singing an evangelistic song like “Facing a Task Unfinished,” Crutchfield said.
“We really appreciate the leadership of Dr. Hunt and NAMB for ringing the bell for evangelism,” said Patterson. “Who’s Your One has gotten us back to a higher intentionality of doing the good that we know we need to do. This theme is really going across all of our conventions, and we are excited to see how churches are responding. We pray that the Lord continues to use it.”
Written by Brandon Elrod of the North American Mission Board.