Southern Baptist Convention messengers voted by a majority of 52.48% to allow churches to use the descriptor name “Great Commission Baptists.” The convention’s approval followed heated debate on Tuesday. Check back here throughout the day for more on name change and other actions of the convention.
Archives For November 30, 1999
As the first official day of the SBC came to a close, Chris Flynn shared some of the week’s highlights so far:
Best New Orleans food experience:
Mother’s ham and roast beef po’boy
Best freebie:
Cafe Du Monde coffee and beignet mix from reception hosted by Mississippi College (my alma mater)
Favorite Pastors’ Conference speaker:
David Platt
Sermon where you took the most notes:
David Jeremiah’s Pastors’ Conference message
Friendliest new face:
TIE between Marty King (former Illinois Baptist editor) and Danny Sinquefield, pastor of Faith Baptist Church in Bartlett, Tenn.
Best celebrity sighting:
William Green, member of the Strength Team and former first round draft pick of the NFL’s Cleveland Browns
Biggest surprise of today’s business sessions:
The amount of contention over the name change recommendation
Biggest surprise the of convention as a whole:
Late nights
Word that best describes the week so far:
Busy
Most looking forward to:
Hearing more from new SBC President Fred Luter
Waiting for the Baptist 21 luncheon for young leaders to begin Monday.
Mingling at the reception for Illinois Baptists, family and friends.
In the North American Mission Board’s SEND North America
city-themed exhibit.
Posted by Eric Reed
Fred Luter stands on the edge of history. Today he is expected to be elected the first African American president of the Southern Baptist Convention.
The New Orleans pastor wowed the crowd at the Pastors’ Conference last night with a sermon that was at once fiery, commanding, and joyful. Several times, after a series of rhetorical shouts, Luter flashed a winsome smile. Calling out a string of America’s sins – including abortion, racism, homosexual lifestyle, crime and drugs – Luter concluded there might be many things he’s ashamed of, given the current state of the nation, but “I am not ashamed of the Gospel!”
Excited by his subject, he jumped up and down in place, then turned to the head of the Pastors’ Conference and asked, “Can I do that here?” And he jumped some more to the cheers of a warm and approving audience.
No one besides Luter has been nominated for president so far. Messengers will vote later this afternoon.
Observers inside and outside the convention are wondering what the long-term impact of Luter’s election would mean for the historically white denomination. While the convention has made great strides in ethnic church planting, and now has about 20 percent non-white membership, the question arises how Luter can turn his election from a public statement into lasting change.
Bruce Nolan, writing in the New Orleans Times Picayune, framed the issue this way:
“’With Fred’s election the Southern Baptist Convention is going to affirm that change has to come,’ said the Rev. David Crosby, of First Baptist Church of New Orleans, who will nominate Luter on Tuesday.
Others cautioned that the election does not by itself signal wholesale change.
In the Southern Baptist world, the president’s influence lies in the power to nominate like-minded people to seminaries and agency boards. Presidents typically serve two one-year terms, so it takes several in succession to change the course of Baptist life.
‘Luter could be the first of a series of presidents moving the denomination toward a more racially and ethnically sensitive position,’ said Bill Leonard, a former Southern Baptist who is now chair of Baptist studies at Wake Forest University Divinity School.
‘But if it stops with him and it turns out he is the only one, it will be a moot point.'”
To read Nolan’s full article, go to http://www.nola.com/religion/index.ssf/2012/06/the_rev_luter_is_unoppose.html.
Illinois Baptists brought their friends and families to a reception following the Monday evening session of the SBC Pastors’ Conference. Conversation flowed along with the coffee. Check out these photos, and look for more in the July 2 Illinois Baptist.
David Platt, author of “Radical,” speaks passionately during the SBC Pastors’ Conference.
Alabama pastor David Platt delivered a blistering message this afternoon at the SBC Pastors’ Conference, touching on two hot-button issues emerging at this year’s convention: the debate over Reformed theology in the SBC, and true salvation and the “sinner’s prayer.”
Platt urged pastors toward a unified view of the “mystery” of salvation focused on true repentance.
“Who among us has a market on the mind of God? Who among the finite, flawed men in this room is able to fully comprehend the majesty of God and man’s salvation? Let us behold the mystery of biblical conversion. Let us not attempt to explain it away, and let us certainly not try to debate it away and in the process divide ourselves as the body of Christ.
Let us humbly discuss the things we do not know, things that have been pondered by Bible-believing Christians for centuries, and let us boldly declare truth that we do know, truth that has been boldly proclaimed by Bible-believing Christians for centuries.
We all in this room, all of us, we know and we agree, everyone who repents and believes in the Lord Jesus will be saved.”
When you deal with those our society and culture wants to forget, and you see how God works in them, it will teach you how much God will work in your life, and how adequate His grace is.
Chuck Kelley, New Orleans Baptist Theological Seminary president, on the seminary’s educational programs in several southern prisons
Posted by Meredith Flynn
“It’s hard to believe it hasn’t really started yet.” That’s what Chris Flynn said as we finally got back from a whirlwind day in New Orleans. And he’s right- the convention doesn’t technically start until tomorrow, but the Pastors’ Conference was in full swing yesterday, as four sets of fathers and sons co-preached, co-worshiped and co-challenged in front of a large audience Sunday evening.
Before that, we went to church at First Baptist, New Orleans, where IMB President Tom Elliff didn’t give a traditional international missions message, but instead focused on fathers. At the end of the service, he invited all fathers (biological and spiritual) to come to altar and pray for strength and wisdom to lead their families. Really moving.
One other note about the church: During the announcement times before and after the service, leaders updated members on various community outreach projects, including an initiative called Fuel the Future that provides backpacks of food for hungry kids. The backpacks, currently helping 170 children in New Orleans, are handed out on Fridays so that they’re sure to have something to eat over the weekend. Church members donate the food or money to purchase a specific list of non-perishables. I thought it was a great example of identifying a real need and rallying together to meet it.
After church, we stood in line for a po’boy at Mother’s, a landmark restaurant in the French Quarter. (The photo below doesn’t really do justice to the sandwich – a “Ferdi” with baked ham, pork and “debris,” which is the stuff that falls off the roast beef as they carve it).
Before the Pastors’ Conference session started, we headed over to the convention hall to register as messengers. And this is where my favorite part of any convention began. Talking, talking, talking. To old friends, people who remember you from when you were too young to remember them, and ministry co-workers you haven’t seen in years.
The evening ended with a message from Tony Evans, pastor of Oak Cliff Bible Fellowship in Dallas, Texas. And in just an hour from now, they’ll start again in the convention hall. Today, we’ll hear from pastors like David Jeremiah, David Platt, James MacDonald, and Fred Luter. Keep checking back here for the latest!
By Meredith Flynn
I’m in New Orleans this week for my ninth Southern Baptist Convention. From Dallas at age 16 to this convention, my second in New Orleans, at age 30, you might say I’ve grown up here. And while there are arguably (well, let’s be honest, inarguably) “cooler” things to do in the summer, I’ve loved them all. Mostly because this is my family (literally – because my whole family still comes, and figuratively – because Southern Baptists form their own kind of family).
There is one very new component to my convention experience this year: I’ve brought along a newcomer! My husband of eight months, Chris, is at his very first SBC after only a few years of attending a Southern Baptist church. Every day this week, check here for a brief (hopefully fun) report of the convention through his eyes (told by me, but usually with him sitting next to me). And be sure to read the July 2 edition of the Illinois Baptist for more of his New Orleans adventures.
For now, check out these pictures from our first day:
Breakfast at Cafe Du Monde, famous for strong coffee and beignets
(fancy donuts with powdered sugar).
New Orleans architecture on display in the French Quarter.
Chris ate his first Disaster Relief meal (thankfully, not in the midst of
an actual disaster). Texas DR volunteers prepared delicious jambalaya
for a block party hosted by Oak Park Baptist Church on Saturday.
By Meredith Flynn
For the next week, the IB staff is in New Orleans covering the Southern Baptist Convention annual meeting. Check back here often for updates from the convention floor, the latest from other meetings and events, and some fun bits and pieces you might not see anywhere else.
Tonight’s post: Crossover, the SBC’s annual missions partnership in the convention’s host city. Visitors come a day early to work with local churches in block parties, door-to-door evangelism, prayer walking, and a host of other outreach events.
New Orleans church-goers understand missions. In the seven years since Hurricane Katrina, the city has seen thousands upon thousands of volunteers, people who want to bring hope to a place that had lost all hope. Oak Park Baptist Church on New Orleans’ Westbank has hosted many of those volunteers on its third floor, which was converted into dormitory-style housing after Katrina.
The city can be a draining place to do ministry. When you ask Pastor Bobby Stults if the work is tiring, he smiles, hangs his head in mock despair, and asks, “Does it show?”
Oak Park has seen its neighborhood change drastically in the five years since Stults became pastor. Rapid migration out of the city’s center meant a mostly Anglo neighborhood very quickly became a mostly African American one. Stults, who came to New Orleans to attend seminary in 1995 and never left, has led the church to make a conscious decision (followed by years to conscious effort) to become a community church. A place where its neighbors feel welcomed, accepted, ministered to.
That’s why Stults planned a block party, with the help of volunteers from Texas, Illinois and Arizona, that also featured six African American rappers from a sister church. “This is the music of our community,” he said.
His church has gone through attendance ups and downs, as people have gotten comfortable (or uncomfortable) with Oak Park’s new mission. But the people who worship at the church now are unified behind the idea that this mission field is their responsibility, and they’re led by a pastor who knows, even when the work is draining, that God has placed them here for such a time as this.
For more on Crossover, see the July 2 issue of the Illinois Baptist. Go to IBSA.org/IllinoisBaptist to subscribe.
Pastor Bobbby Stults (right) greets K.C. Leonard, a member of his church, during their Crossover block party June 16.
iB2 News 