WARNER ROBINS, Ga. — About 150 middle and high school students filled the platform at Second Baptist Church Sunday night, helping open the 204th Georgia Baptist Convention Annual Meeting with an emphasis on reaching the next generation with the gospel.
The students, participants in Georgia Baptist SURGE Music Camp, helped lead worship during the Mission Celebration and shared music from ABIDE, recorded during SURGE 2026.
“If you’re concerned about the future, just look up behind me, and you’ll see it,” Georgia Baptist Mission Board Executive Director Thomas Hammond told those gathered for the opening session.
Hammond said the Georgia Baptist Mission Board invested $5,432,285 in NextGen ministries in 2026, representing about one-third of the Mission Board’s Cooperative Program budget.
“It’s obvious that Georgia Baptists, well, we treasure reaching the lost, obeying the Great Commission, and reaching the next generation,” Hammond said. “That’s why we’re investing all these resources, all of our energy, our prayers, and everything, putting our hearts into this, reaching them all with the gospel.”
Hammond said 3.6 million Georgians are younger than 25, about one-third of the state’s population, and approximately 1.7 million students are enrolled in Georgia’s K-12 schools.
“Millions of young people, just like these that are behind me, are growing up right here in our state and need to hear the good news of Jesus Christ,” he said.
GBMB NextGen ministries include Impact Camp, SuperWow, MOVE Conference, Fervent Next Gen Girls Conference, SURGE music camp, ReelFest, Camp Pinnacle, and Confluence.
Nearly 1,200 students attended Confluence, the Mission Board’s annual collegiate gathering, last month at Eagle’s Landing First Baptist Church in McDonough. Hammond said 22 students made professions of faith and another 118 responded to a call to ministry.
“We’re not trying to just fill up camps and conferences and events,” Hammond said. “What we’re doing is we’re praying that God will use these opportunities to change lives, to call out leaders, to raise up the next generation of Great Commission servants.”
“The next generation isn’t the future of the church,” he added. “It is a critical part of the church today.”
Hammond said the missionaries, pastors, student ministers, worship leaders, seminary professors, and church planters who will serve in years to come include young people who have yet to hear the gospel.
“Somewhere in Georgia, there’s a young person who will one day take the gospel to the nations,” he said. “There’s a teenager who one day will pastor your church. There’s a college student who one day will plant a church that will reach a community for Christ.”
Tucker Young, a freshman at the University of Georgia, told how leaders in his local church, SURGE, Baptist Collegiate Ministries, and other Georgia Baptist ministries had invested in him as he sensed a call to ministry.
Young said the relationships formed through SURGE continued as he and other students moved from high school into college. At UGA, BCM has given him a close group of fellow believers who encourage him and hold him accountable.
Asked what he would tell pastors and ministry leaders about serving young people, Young pointed to those who had invested in him.
“Take a chance on the next generation and give them a shot to really feel like they’re contributing to the life of the church,” he said, “because that’s one thing that the people in my church have done to me, and it’s really helped me grow and really shaped who I am today.”
Georgia Tech student Ashton Paredes shared how his involvement with BCM began after arriving on campus expecting football to define his college experience.
“Football was my plan,” he said. “Football was my identity. It wasn’t just something that I did. It was exactly who I was.”
Paredes walked onto the Georgia Tech football team but was cut during the spring of his freshman year.
“I had no idea what I was going to do with my life because I had just lost my everything,” he said. “I had lost my identity.”
A BCM retreat called Focus changed his direction. There, another student showed him how to read Scripture, spend time with the Lord, and develop his relationship with Christ. Paredes said he surrendered his life to Christ during worship on the beach at the retreat.
This past summer, Paredes served on a mission trip to Romania, where he preached for the first time.
“I was really just taught what God can do with a yes, what He can do with obedience,” he said. “On this mission trip, I said yes.”
Paredes said he does not yet know whether his future will be in vocational ministry or another field.
“But I know that at the end of the day I want to be obedient," he said. "And I want to follow that for the rest of my life.”
Hammond said Georgia Baptists currently have collegiate ministries on 40 campuses across the state.
“Every campus matters, every student matters, and every opportunity to share the gospel matters,” he said.
Bryson Griner, now a student at Truett McConnell University, told how he sensed a call to ministry while attending SuperWow in 2022.
Afterward, Griner became part of a monthly online gathering the Mission Board established for middle and high school students who had expressed a call to ministry.
Trent made clear, Griner said, that the program could not replace discipleship in a local church.
Griner said he was encouraged to find someone in his church to disciple him and developed close relationships with his pastor and his grandfather, who has also served as a pastor.
More than 30 of the SURGE students on the platform Sunday night surrendered their lives to ministry during camp this summer, Hammond said.
“We’re seeing, as Chris shared earlier, hundreds of young people who are surrendering to this,” he said. “We are excited about the future of Georgia Baptists.”
Krista Staton, the Mission Board’s NextGen Kids consultant, said Vacation Bible School is one of the most effective ways churches can reach children with the gospel. VBS has been a leading evangelistic and outreach ministry for churches for more than a century, she said, and encouraged congregations of all sizes to take part, noting that the GBMB offers training and resources.
Jeff Brown, pastor of First Baptist Church Waleska, said the church held VBS this year for the first time since before the COVID-19 pandemic.
The congregation averages about 50 to 55 people on Sunday mornings and is largely made up of older adults. Other Baptist churches helped provide decorations, supplies, and workers for the week.
About 25 to 30 children participated.
By the end of the week, a 7-year-old boy had prayed to receive Christ. A girl in the same class later told her teacher she had prayed at home to receive Jesus as Savior, and was later baptized at First Baptist Waleska.
“Those results are eternal,” Brown said. “That impact is eternal, and that makes it all worthwhile.”
He encouraged smaller churches, older congregations, and bivocational pastors not to assume VBS is beyond their ability.
“Don’t give up on VBS, and don’t hesitate to reach out to your brothers and sisters in Christ in your local area, your local Baptist churches that are in your same association,” Brown said.
Near the end of the NextGen emphasis, Hammond pointed again to the students on the platform.
“This is not the future, though they are the future,” he said. “This is more than the future. This is the right now of ministry that’s taking place all across our state.”
“I’m as encouraged as I’ve ever been in the opportunity that we have before us to reach Georgia with the gospel,” Hammond said. “We just must continue to be faithful to share the gospel.
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