Destination World

by Matt Pinson, President, Free Will Baptist Bible College

I remember attending a National Association seminar about ten years ago. The discussion revolved around the large numbers of missionaries retiring over the next several years. This was compared to the dwindling numbers of students answering the call to cross-cultural missionary service. I would never have dreamed a decade ago that Free Will Baptist Bible College would experience such a boom in the numbers of students answering our Lord’s call to service as career missionaries, tentmakers, and short-term missionaries.

FWBBC is abuzz with missions. Our student-led Global Missions Fellowship (GMF) stimulates interest in missions and builds awareness of people across the globe who need the gospel. GMF accomplishes this through daily student-led prayer services for missions, fundraising for mission projects, and student mission trips. GMF also sponsors “Missions Moments,” once a week in chapel.

GMF is symbolic of FWBBC’s 62-year long drive to fill its role in the Great Commission—and to equip our students to do the same. It is our intention to make global missions not only a career but also a lifestyle. We want FWBBC to produce graduates who are Great Commission Christians.

We believe that every student can play a special role in this mandate. Some students are called to career mission service and are being educated for that role at FWBBC. Our excellent B.A. degree program in Missions takes missions education seriously, for majors and non-majors alike.

Headed by veteran missionary-teacher Ron Callaway, missions majors combine heart, head, and hands to master cross-cultural ministry. The missions program sponsors trips, internships, conferences, and a host of other activities and events to make missions a central part of campus life.

Students who are called to local church ministry—pastors, Christian education ministers, children’s and youth ministers, music ministers, and others—will have the opportunity to stimulate a vision for missions in the ministry of a local church.

Other students major in business, teaching, counseling, or some other “secular” field. Many of them will be career tentmakers in restricted access countries. Others will be called to surrender a specific time in their lives—a week, a month, a year—in short-term missionary service. They will use their vocational skills to help reach the lost in another culture. All of our students will be involved in praying, giving, and sending.

FWBBC’s missions program works hand-in-hand with Free Will Baptist International Missions to educate Free Will Baptist missionaries who are thoroughly prepared for cross-cultural ministry. Leaders from Free Will Baptist International Missions and Home Missions have a presence on campus, and we are training students to support denominational mission efforts.

The college’s missions-as-lifestyle approach is probably the main reason that more than 88 percent of all Free Will Baptist international missionaries have attended Free Will Baptist Bible College. We are boldly continuing our commitment to global missions—to being a Great Commission college for the glory of God in the 21st century.

Matt Pinson is the President of Free Will Baptist Bible College in Nashville, TN.