IMB Sending Celebration Will Commission New Missionaries in Georgia and Online

The International Mission Board has scheduled a Sending Celebration for January 27, 2027, at Johnson Ferry Baptist Church in Marietta, Georgia, and the official event page invites Christians nationwide to participate through the livestream. IMB holds these gatherings throughout the year to worship together, pray, and send Southern Baptists’ newest missionaries. The program centers the testimonies of people preparing to serve across cultures, including stories of how God called them to be steadfastly present among communities where many have not heard the gospel. That focus makes the celebration more than a ceremonial farewell. It gives local churches a visible picture of missionary vocation, congregational partnership, and the continuing responsibility to support those being sent. The official page encourages families, small groups, and entire congregations to watch together, and recordings are normally made available after the live event for churches unable to join at the scheduled time. Viewers can also participate through the IMB’s digital channels and app. The event’s prayer guidance is concrete: ask God to give missionaries wisdom and grace as they learn new languages for gospel communication, pray that missionary children adjust well to a new culture, and seek favor as families apply for visas to live in their places of service. These are practical needs that often remain invisible when churches speak about missions only in broad terms. The Marietta gathering is one of several Sending Celebrations listed on IMB’s current schedule, but the January date falls within the next 90 days and is accessible beyond Georgia because of the nationwide stream. Christians planning to attend in person should use the official event page for the latest program and access information, while online participants can organize a church watch gathering that includes worship, focused prayer, and follow-up support for missionary work.

The celebration is especially useful for pastors, missions committees, prayer teams, student ministries, families considering missionary service, and congregations seeking to make global mission a visible part of church life. A church can prepare by setting aside the evening for a hosted watch gathering, assigning leaders to introduce IMB’s purpose, and placing the published prayer points in members’ hands before the stream begins. Small groups can listen for the regions, peoples, challenges, and forms of service described in the missionaries’ stories, then translate those details into specific intercession rather than vague goodwill. Parents may find the event helpful for showing children that missionary families include children who face language, school, friendship, and cultural transitions of their own. Pastors can also use the celebration to teach that sending is a local-church responsibility as well as an agency process: congregations recognize gifts, test calling, train workers, provide relationships of accountability, give sacrificially, and remain engaged after missionaries depart. Prospective missionaries should not treat an inspiring testimony as a substitute for counsel, preparation, and patient discernment, but hearing real stories can help them ask better questions and begin conversations with church leaders. After the event, participating churches could adopt a regular prayer rhythm, learn about an unreached people group, invite a missionary speaker, strengthen care for workers already connected to the congregation, or explore how members can serve internationally and among diaspora communities at home. The livestream makes the gathering nationally available, but its most meaningful outcome will be local and durable: churches that remember names, pray about actual needs, support workers through difficulty, and keep the Great Commission connected to ordinary worship and discipleship. Attending is therefore practical not because every viewer will go overseas, but because every congregation can understand, pray, give, encourage, and send more faithfully.