SBC Convention Gears Up For Business, Evangelistic Outreach
by Allie Martin
June 17, 2005
(AgapePress) - More than 10,000 Southern Baptists from around the United States are heading to Tennessee for the denomination's annual meeting, but also for a major evangelism blitz.This Saturday, Southern Baptists will take part in door-to-door evangelism in conjunction with 200 Nashville, Tennessee-area churches. This coordinated outreach is all part of the event known as "Crossover Nashville" and will launch the "Everyone Can" Kingdom Challenge, an initiative to witness, win, and baptize one million people in one year.
Southern Baptist Convention (SBC) president Bobby Welch says the one-day event will build momentum for the yearlong initiative. "Our whole goal is to attempt to find and discover ministry needs in the city, and either deal with them on the spot or pass them on to churches in the vicinity," he explains.
"We're praying that we'll have opportunity to share the gospel with a lot of people." Welch notes. "We're going to be passing out tracts and looking for those opportunities and those ministry needs as well."
The SBC spokesman says the local people involved in "Crossover Nashville" have worked tirelessly on this major evangelism effort, and it is shaping up to be a powerful and effective outreach. "It's not just because it's in Nashville," he says. "It's because a lot of people out here are praying, a lot of these pastors right down at the heart and grassroots level of our convention."
Welch commends the volunteers from Nashville area churches, noting, "they're out here working really hard to get their people there." He says the area Southern Baptists have put a "tremendous amount of effort behind this on behalf of these pastors and people in the local church."
The Southern Baptist Convention holds outreach efforts and events each year in the city that hosts its annual meeting. The SBC will also be holding its Pastors' Conference beginning on Sunday in Nashville, and the regular business meeting for the denomination runs Tuesday through Wednesday.
Building Spiritual Walls
The theme for this year's SBC Pastors' Conference is "Build Up the Wall ... Stand in the Gap." Conference president Steve Gaines of Gardendale, Alabama, says the theme is drawn from Ezekiel 22:30, which says "I searched for a man among them who would repair the wall and stand in the gap."
"[W]e're really encouraging pastors to be a prophetic voice for our nation, to call our nation back to holiness and repentance and to revival," he says. "So that's what these guys will be encouraging our pastors to do -- and I believe our guys will respond to the challenge in a wonderful way."
Gaines says the Pastors' Conference is a chance for leaders to be encouraged and equipped. "If you write checks but you don't make deposits, you're going to be overdrawn -- and pastors are always writing spiritual checks and emotional checks, giving and giving and giving," he explains. "This is a time when we want to give back to pastors and to fill their spiritual tank."
The Pastors' Conference features 11 speakers, include Voddie Baucham, Ergun Caner, Jerry Vinces, former Alabama Supreme Court Chief Justice Roy Moore, Jerry Falwell, and Adrian Rogers.
Allie Martin, a regular contributor to AgapePress, is a reporter for American Family Radio News, which can be heard online.
