The Laymen Auxiliary
The Laymen's League is the organization of men throughout the Church. It is the channel through which laymen make their best and most effective contribution to the life and work of the church. It is an organized effort for the enlistment of men. It's the church. It is an effort by saved men to reach unsaved for God, for Christ, and for his church.
It is an organization of the Baptist Church to teach men to understand the Christian faith, and to possess a knowledge of the Baptist Church (Doctrine, polity, and practices), and to prepare them to present and discuss these vital matters intelligently.
The Laymen's League is a movement of Christian men to Christianize the community in which they live (their city, their county, their state, their nation and their world). The training center and a service agency for growing baptist men. We must enlist, coordinate, cultivate, study, worship, and our Christian men to move forward in a positive manner.
Purpose
Pledge
Prayer
Purpose of the Laymen's League
- To enlist and coordinate the manpower of the local congregation for an effective performance of essential: Christian activities.
- To cultivate the Christian life of the laymen through study, worship, fellowship and service.
- To enlist un-churched men for fellowship in Christian service through the Church and to bring unsaved men into vital relations with God in Christ through personal commitment to Him.
- To inspire the men of the church to support the total program of their church, their association, its auxiliaries and their state and national convention.
Laymen's League Pledge
I am persuaded by the teachings of the blessed Bible - by daily readings, meditation and communion with my Lord and Savior Jesus Christ - to live an upright Christian life to practice his teachings in my dealings with my fellowman - to dedicate my talents and give of my time, influence and means to teaching or spreading the Christian Religion at home and abroad - to win souls through personal service for Christ - to encourage and help in the enlistment of young people in Christian work - and make my home a center of Christian light and love.
To these ends - I pledge - to devote myself and seek divine aid and guidance daily that I may become a living witness and a bright and shining light for my Lord.
Laymen's League Prayer
A PRAYER FOR MEN
Lord God, who are perfect and who has sent Jesus as a perfect example of what it means to be fully human and fully Divine, I come now in my humanness seeking to get more in touch with the Divine. Help me to see both the strength and the vulnerability; the boldness and the humility; the rebuking and the redeeming natures of Jesus. Help me to recognize in Jesus what it truly means to be a man of God. I surrender and place myself anew in Your hands, and like clay in the potter's hands, I ask that You mold me after Your will, "while I am waiting yielded and still." In the name of Jesus, I pray, Amen.
Bro. Charles Dodd, Laymen's President.
East Mississippi Baptist State Convention Laymen's League Objectives
To provide Christian Education and meaningful fellowship for men and boys.
To provide training in Church Membership.
To provide opportunities and encourage men and boys to observe and participate in seasons of prayer.
To persuade men to support and participate when feasible in Home and Foreign Missions.
To inspire men to attend and support the Annual Sessions of the State Laymen's League.
To develop and participate in Laymen's work in the local association.
To encourage men to support the Laymen's work of the National Convention.
To provide opportunities and support the organizing and work of boys in the local church.
To support the Unified program of the East Mississippi Baptist State Convention.
To support other Baptist Groups, Local and state wide.
To develop Christian Stewards.
To enlist men in active Christian Service through the local church.
To cooperate with the pastor, officers, and other organizations in developing the local church.
To encourage Baptist Laymen to attend church regularly.
To encourage laymen to support the Financial program of the local church and denomination.
To reach unsaved men with the Gospel and to win them to God through Jesus Christ.
To urge men to participate as Christian Laymen in the political, civic, social and educational activities of the local community, state and nation.
To promote the establishment of Christian homes and to guide the family towards fuller Christian development and cooperation.
To guide men in intelligent, effective, Christian social action.
To foster in Baptist men a vital and active concern in community welfare and betterment and to promote Christian race relations.
Laymen's League History
The Laymen's Missionary Movement
Dwight L. Moody, an unordained evangelist, and John R. Mott, a Methodist laymen, played major roles in beginning the International Laymen's Missionary Movement. These two men were confident that the only way the world could be evangelized was through the mobilizing of laymen.
The Movement had its beginning in New York November 13- 14, 1906. The American Board of Commissioners for Foreign Missions arranged an interdenominational meeting to commemorate the 100th Anniversary of the famous William College Haystack prayer meeting that had launched the foreign Missions Movement of North America. John B. Sleman, a prominent laymen, made "A Call to Prayer" for laymen of different denominations to come together to give support to foreign missions. The Laymen's Missionary Movement was launched with a 10 day prayer meeting in the upper room.
An executive committee met in Philadelphia January 9, 1907, to state the purpose of the Movement. The statement included: We earnestly recommend to the Foreign Mission Boards of all denominations that they secure groups of laymen to promote campaigns of intelligent and generous interest in foreign missions with special reference to the men of the churches. The expense of these movements to be borne, whenever possible, by such groups of men so that funds of the boards shall not be drawn upon."
The Southern Baptist Convention was the first denomination to respond to the growing Movement. Joshua Levering of Baltimore and W. J. Northern of Atlanta took the lead in calling a conference of Laymen to meet a day before the 1907 Southern Baptist Convention meeting in Richmond, Virginia. After a full and free discussion of the report by both laymen and ministers, the new movement was approved as an Auxiliary to the Southern Baptist Convention.
Because God sent His Son as the perfect example of what a man should be, one must pray to God for the strength and courage to model their ways after Jesus's. As it is written in Mark 16:16a: "He that believeth and is baptized shall be saved..."
