Starting the new year in prayer

I hope your new year is off to a good start. I trust that God has shown his goodness and mercy to you as we leave 2025 and enter 2026.

I still have fond memories of our meeting together this past November in Abilene–the times of worship, preaching of God’s word and encouragement we received, spending time in fellowship and seeing one another. 

During that meeting, I shared with you that this year, 2026, we would be rolling out our GC2 Strong strategy. We talked at the Annual Meeting about loving God, loving people and making disciples and what that means. We reminded ourselves that the biggest problem that we are facing is lostness. There are a lot of people in our state and beyond who do not know Jesus, and our churches need an awakening to the Great Commandment and the Great Commission.

This year, as we roll out GC2 Strong, there will be a pilot group of churches that will enter the program, and then there will be the opportunity for other churches to do the same this year and in the years ahead. I want you to know that there will be a place for every church in this process. GC2 Strong seeks to strengthen the church, to strengthen ministers and to strengthen missions, and we are excited about the opportunity we have to do that together.

During my report, I also shared with you that there are multiple ways in which local churches can get involved now, and the most important one is prayer. Specifically, we want to pray for those who don’t know Jesus. Can you imagine if all Texas Baptists churches pulled together to pray for every person in their community by name? There are multiple ways to do that, and the Bless app is one of them. We have provided a free one-year subscription for every Texas Baptists church to download and use the app with their congregation. This app helps you to pray for 50 of your closest neighbors by name. You can learn more and sign up here.

Can you imagine what God will do when we all join together in praying for the lost? Not only will God begin to change the hearts of the people we are praying for, but He will also change the hearts of the people praying to make us more compassionate and ready to be witnesses of the gospel. I don’t think we’ll experience spiritual awakening until we seek God and pray for those who do not know Jesus.

Another way to get involved is to participate in the Cooperative Program. Thank you for what you already do. We encourage you to consider doing more, as God is calling us to this great task to live out the Great Commandment and the Great Commission together. I hope we can come alongside the Holy Spirit and see a movement of God this year.

Let’s get off to a good start this year. Let’s pray for those who don’t know Jesus in our state and beyond.