Events Leading Up to SBC's 2006 Meeting Stress Outreach, Soul-Winning
by Allie Martin and Jenni Parker
June 12, 2006
(AgapePress) - - The theme for the Southern Baptist Convention's 2006 Pastor's Conference, scheduled for June 11-12, is "Reaching today's world for Jesus Christ." Organizers say this year's conference is unlike any other the SBC has hosted. The Pastor's Conference is just one of the precursors to the 2006 annual meeting of the Southern Baptist Convention, taking place this week in Greensboro, North Carolina. The two-day event for pastors was designed to reach a broad spectrum of church leaders from young to old, from traditional or contemporary, large or small churches, urban or rural.
Other events have helped set the stage for this year's SBC gathering. On Saturday evening, the Life Community Church in Jamestown, North Carolina, held a block party on its property, with games and activities for kids and food, music, and testimony from church members -- all part of Crossover Triad, an effort by Southern Baptist churches to take the gospel to the unchurched throughout the area. (See related article)
Jesse Wilson is discipleship pastor for Life Community Church. He says taking part in the Crossover Triad outreach has helped the church connect better with the area. "We have done these once or twice a year, and we have seen some great fruit from it," he notes.
Several people accepted Christ as a result of the weekend's Crossover effort, Wilson notes. Now, as the Southern Baptist Convention's annual gathering continues, he says his church will be busy following up the community outreach effort.
The 2006 Pastor's Conference -- Putting Substance Over Style
In his welcoming remarks, Pastors Conference president Bryant Wright said it is vital for Southern Baptists to change their mindset when it comes to worship and methodology. "The amazing thing about worship," he noted, "is worship is very subjective. There is no right or wrong way to worship God as long as it is centered on Jesus Christ and grounded in the Word of God."
Worship at the Pastor's Conference was designed to bear out these principles. While Sunday's session featured a blended musical style, the Monday afternoon session was planned with a contemporary theme, and the evening session has been planned to feature traditional worship.
Another Pastor's Conference speaker, Pastor Dick Lincoln of South Carolina, touched on style differences in his address as well. He encouraged pastors to review their strategies when it comes to evangelism, referring his listeners to the Apostle Paul's teaching about reaching people from different backgrounds.
Lincoln warned SBC church leaders against becoming so entrenched in a tradition or area of comfort that they cease to be relevant. "You can become so formal that people can't relate," he observed. "You can become so country that you are hokey; you can become so contemporary that you're just nothing except funky for Jesus, and you're not really counting for Him. Any of them can go over the edge in a bad direction."
Why is it, the South Carolina pastor mused, that Christians will go to all the trouble of translating the Bible into "every imaginable language" but then demand that those who hear worship in a particular way must adjust their ears to "our preferences" in worship. "Why would we do that?" he asked.
Church leaders more concerned about preserving their worship style as sacrosanct than about reaching a world that may not understand the gospel message "the way we speak it," ought to "go back and reexamine [their] genuine concerns," Lincoln asserted. He said Southern Baptists must stop placing their worship preferences on a pedestal and must not be afraid to try new methods.
While admitting he was not initially fond of contemporary worship styles, Pastor Lincoln noted that his church has reached more people by shifting its focus to the unchurched. He challenged his fellow Southern Baptist pastors to lead the way in stepping out of their comfort zones in order to reach lost people for Christ.
Pastors' Personal Witnessing and Purpose-Driven Priorities
A megachurch pastor from Georgia picked up the theme of soul winning when his turn came to speak. Pastor Johnny Hunt of First Baptist Church of Woodstock, Georgia, told the Greensboro audience the heads of churches must lead by example when it comes to personal evangelism. Basing his sermon on the 17th chapter of Acts, which documents Paul's preaching in Thessalonica, Hunt said churches in America need to regain their passion for soul winning.
The Georgia minister cited a recent study that showed 53 percent of U.S. pastors had gone six months or longer without witnessing to anyone. "And they were asked as to the reason," he notes. "The number-one reason was busyness. But I've got another word. If you're too busy as a gospel preacher to share the gospel, that's not busyness; that's disobedience. And the last time I checked, disobedience was sinfulness."
Hunt also warned pastors that they must never "water down" the gospel by trying to make it so "relevant" that it is stripped of all its authority and power. Rather, the pastor urged, Christian ministers must preach scriptural truth and leave the results up to God. "Just be right with God and love Jesus and get up and tell the truth," he said. "It's amazing what God will do when we preach the truth."
A similar message came from best-selling author and well-known pastor Rick Warren, who was scheduled to close out Sunday evening's session of the Pastor's Conference. The pastor of Saddleback Church in Lake Forest, California, had a last-minute family responsibility and prepared a videotaped address to be played in his absence. In that message, he told his fellow clergy that believers must start living like Jesus and trusting in God the way Jesus did in order to have a lasting impact on the world.
"The priority is to live for the kingdom of God," Warren said. "Only people who don't know God are always worrying. In other words, when I worry, I'm acting like an atheist." What the SBC needs most of all, he contended, is Christians who will live like Jesus every day.
Although Pastor Warren was not there in person, his prerecorded sermon was well received. As one conference attendee noted, "We may disagree with some of the things that he's done or is doing, in a sense, but you can't disagree with the heart that he has."
Disaster for New Orleans, Opportunity for the Gospel
The President of New Orleans Baptist Theological Seminary, Chuck Kelley, also addressed the conference about the impact of a servant's personal witness. He said when Hurricane Katrina hit nearly 10 months ago, it flooded the seminary campus and challenged students and faculty to live out their faith in Christ in some very concrete ways. And, as a result, he added, the storm also changed people's attitudes toward Christians and their message.
"There has always been in New Orleans a deep-seated hostility towards the gospel," Kelley observed. "Evangelical Christians come to that city, and they immediately begin feeling intimidated and kind of oppressed by the spiritual darkness of that place," he said, "but Satan got floated out on the flood, and right now we are seeing an opportunity to share Jesus that we have never had before."
Katrina scattered New Orleans Baptist Theological Seminary students throughout 29 states, and its faculty were displaced throughout nine states. But although the hurricane devastated the city of New Orleans, Kelley says it showcased God's greatness in the midst of life's storms.
A Moral Responsibility to Support Missions
A main theme that has emerged repeatedly during the 2006 Southern Baptist Convention Pastor's Conference is the call for a renewed emphasis on evangelism. Frank Page, pastor of First Baptist Church in Taylors, South Carolina, says that theme is one reason why he is running for president of the Southern Baptist Convention. He says he entered the race for SBC president because he believes it is important that SBC churches support the cooperative program, the denomination's main channel for sending state, national, and international missionaries.
Page notes that his church gives more than 12 percent to the cooperative program, along with funding a major missions program. "Personally, if I am going to call myself a Southern Baptist," he says, "then I feel a moral responsibility to support the work that we have voted to do."
For example, the candidate says, the SBC has more than 5,000 international missionaries and almost 5,000 North American missionaries in the seminaries and the other entities and agencies the church has. "I believe to not support that, for me, is to be morally irresponsible."
Page has pastored First Baptist Church (Taylors) for five and a half years. He will be nominated during the SBC's annual business meeting, which begins tomorrow in Greensboro.
