June 16, 2025
AUGUSTA, Ga. – Georgia Baptists are being called on this year to provide a send-off to potentially dozens of new international missionaries who are being deployed to countries around the world, some to places so dangerous they have to hide their identities.
The International Mission Board, which has begun holding “sending celebrations” as part of state Baptist convention annual meetings, chose Georgia to be the launching pad for the latest crop of missionaries.
The ceremony will be at the Marriott Convention Center in Augusta on Nov. 13, the first day of a three-day Georgia Baptist Convention annual meeting. Georgia Baptist Mission Board Executive Director W. Thomas Hammond Jr. is encouraging people from across the state to be in Augusta to provide the send-off that the missionaries deserve.
“We’re going to have an incredible time celebrating these people who have committed their lives to go to the foreign mission field to share and show and shine the light of Christ,” he told Georgia church leaders in a newly released video.
The sending celebrations tend to be emotional events with new missionaries sharing their faith and talking about where they’re going. Some will be silhouetted behind screens so that they can’t be identified, because the places they will serve are hostile toward Christianity.
International Mission Board President Paul Chitwood will speak at the Augusta sending celebration, extending an invitation for more Georgians to either become missionaries, pray for missionaries or provide the financial support for missionaries.
Chitwood said in a sending celebration in South Carolina last November that the International Mission Board is committed to reaching the nations with the gospel.
“We’re calling in reinforcements,” he said, referencing the 39 new missionaries commissioned in South Carolina. “Thank you for sending them so that they can share, so that the lost can hear, believe, call upon the name of the Lord, and be saved.”
This year’s annual meeting marks a milestone for the Georgia Baptist Convention.
“We’re celebrating 200 years of gospel ministry right here in Georgia and all the things that God has done, is doing, and will be doing through Georgia Baptists,” Hammond said. “This is going to be an incredible time as we celebrate and as we look to the future with great anticipation.”
