Texas Hope 2010: Reaching 12 million in 20 months

DALLAS—The challenge is simple, but immense—share the gospel with 12 million people in Texas in the next 20 months.

It’s Texas Hope 2010, a Baptist General Convention of Texas-initiated effort to share the gospel with every non-Christian in Texas in his or her language and cultural context by Easter 2010. And it’s going to take a lot of people working together to get it done, initiative leaders said.

The 82 people who form the iHope Activation Team believe Baptists will embrace Texas Hope 2010. In its first meeting this month, the group primarily discussed the priorities of the initiative and what Texas might look like if the effort is successful.

“We’re just casting a vision for what it would look like if the followers of Jesus engaged in his model of prayer, care and share for the community,” said Gary Singleton, pastor of The Heights Baptist Church in Richardson and co-chair of the activation team.

The team is made up of a cross-section of Texas Baptist associational directors of missions, ministers and laypeople from across the state. It is broken into smaller groups who have specific expertise and passion about an area, such as prayer, caring outreach and evangelism. Prayer, care and share are the three pillars of the Texas Hope 2010 initiative.

Leaders understand it’s going to take a lot of work to get Texas Hope 2010 off the ground, but they are excited about the possibilities of the evangelistic emphasis to change the spiritual outlook of millions of people across the state, Singleton noted.

The faith of people in Texas Baptist churches could be reinvigorated, creating urgency for each person to share his or her faith, leaders said. People naturally would be sharing their faith, asking people to respond to the hope of Christ.

“We would see followers of Jesus passionate about the unchurched and caring for the unchurched and sharing the gospel with every unchurched person in the state,” Singleton said.