For Future Generations

Last week I had the privilege of addressing a Wednesday night prayer meeting at the First Baptist Church of Arlington, Texas. It was a drizzly night, usually a guarantee that the mostly senior citizens who frequent these weekly prayer meetings would stay home. But this night was different.

My topic was “Muslim Movements to Christ.” By the time the service began, ushers were scrambling to pull additional chairs out of storage rooms as the sanctuary filled to capacity…and then some. Soon the room was filled with mostly silver haired saints, some of whom stood for more than an hour in the back of the hall to hear the good news that God does indeed love Muslims and is redeeming them in unprecedented numbers.

What brought these hundreds of retirees out on a rainy evening in the Texas heartland? Having an 84-year-old mother who continues to engage the world and actively participate in discipling emigrants through her own church home and food pantry ministry, I had a pretty good idea. They wanted to leave a better world for the next generation.

Quoting fellow historian Kenneth Woodward, octogenerian Martin Marty reflects, growing older “pits the temptation to terminal self-absorption against the opportunity to exercise continued care and concern for those generations moving behind us.”

Many of today’s senior citizens are choosing to look forward. They are exercising care and concern for those generations to whom they will pass the baton. Global Gates missionaries are largely a young generation of twenty and thirty-somethings. But their success in engaging the world’s least-reached peoples is fueled by a blessed synergy of collaboration with seasoned saints, godly men and women who come along side them to share their wisdom, their prayers, and their financial means for the sake of advancing the greatest gift we have, the gospel of Jesus Christ, to a new wave of Americans that God is bringing to our shores.

David Garrison
Director, Global Gates