“To God be the Glory! Great things He has done! Thank you, I love you.” – SBC President Fred Luter on his election.

The face of the Southern Baptist Convention has changed. He’s African American, the first minority president in the denomination’s 167-year history. More important, given the challenges before him, he’s smiling. 

 Fred Luter was elected by acclamation at the annual meeting in New Orleans on June 19. He ran for the presidency of the 16-million member convention unopposed.

The denomination that was born out of a break between slave-owning Baptists in the South and northern abolitionists finished the repudiation of racism begun 16 years earlier by naming the New Orleans native, a pastor known for fiery preaching, effective leadership, and a winsome ability to work across cultural lines, as its first black president. 

“God has given me a gift in building bridges through the years, and my prayer is that, someway, somehow, I can get groups on this end [and] groups on this end…and meet together,” Luter said after his election. His diplomatic strategy, joy. 

“I love to laugh,” he told a reporter. “I love to have a good time.”

This joy in the face of adversity has seen Luter through difficult tasks before, including rebuilding Franklin Avenue Baptist Church, a large congregation decimated by Hurricane Katrina in 2005. “If anybody has joy, if anybody has peace and happiness, it should be us,” he said, referring to Christians. 

Because no other candidate ran against Luter, the convention recording secretary came to the microphone to cast the official ballot of the entire convention for Luter, but outgoing president Bryant Wright welcomed messengers to participate in the historic moment by raising their own ballots.

They did. 

And approximately 8,000 people stood to their feet for several minutes of clapping and cheering and, for many, weeping “That was such a wonderful and historic moment …. I was moved to tears of joy as were the African-American pastors I was sitting with,” said Michael Allen, pastor of Uptown Baptist Church in Chicago.   

As Bryant brought Luter to the platform on a wave of adulation, it was evident this was everyone’s decision. Now the question looms, can Luter ride this wave to bring lasting change in the denomination that faces declining membership and offerings, and the need for broader appeal in an increasingly diverse American culture. 

“I think he’ll do a great job, and I think he’ll work at trying to build up the Kingdom of God through the Southern Baptist Convention,” said Marvin Parker, pastor of Broadview Missionary Baptist Church, a large mostly African-American congregation in metro Chicago. “I expect there to be a greater outreach winning souls for Christ, I really expect a great increase because I think he’ll attract more folks with his style of preaching and all.” 

Other actions 

The 2012 convention was historic for reasons other than the barrier-breaking election. One issue that threatened to divide the convention in recent months was the prospect of a name change. 

Messengers approved “Great Commission Baptists” as a descriptor name that can be used in place of “Southern Baptists,” an adjustment many in the north and west see as necessary for effective ministry. The issue was debated on the convention floor until it passed by a narrow majority, 52.78 percent.

Chairman of the name change task force Jimmy Draper presented the recommendation to the convention. Draper told the Illinois Baptist the motivation for the informal change is “missional.” 

“We’re not going to be more evangelistic just because we have a new descriptor. But who among us could be against focusing on the Great Commission?” Draper said. “It’s something that would point us in the right direction, and would always be descriptive of who we are as Southern Baptists. We are, without apology, a Great Commission people.”

The annual meeting wasn’t the forum for debate on Reformed theology that some thought it might be, but messengers did engage in deep discussions about how people come to a saving relationship with Jesus. Alabama pastor David Platt told the stories of two active members of his church who realized they had never come to true faith in Christ. He pleaded with Southern Baptists to reexamine their understanding of repentance and belief.

“They represent a pandemic problem across contemporary Christianity, and some of you have the same story. You made a decision, prayed a prayer, signed a card, got baptized, you thought you were a Christian, you were told you were a Christian, and now you know that you were not. You were deceived.”

Platt sparked conversation about the “sinner’s prayer” months before the convention, in a YouTube video that resulted in a resolution establishing the sinner’s prayer as a biblical expression of repentance and faith. That resolution, along with another that addressed pre-convention debate between Calvinists and non-Calvinists, was recommended by the SBC Resolutions Committee to emphasize cooperation said Chairman Jimmy Scroggins. 

“Southern Baptists are going to have to agree on the essentials. We’re going to have to disagree on certain things, but what we really want to do is lock arms and fight the darkness.”

Other resolutions included statements on same-sex marriage (affirming traditional marriage while discouraging hurtful language in dealing with homosexual issues) and religious freedom (including repudiation of requirements by the Obama health care act requiring religious institutions to provide contraception and other services contrary to their beliefs as part of their employees’ insurance benefits). 

Reports by the SBC’s six seminary presidents, the heads of the International Mission Board, North American Mission Board, LifeWay, GuideStone, and the Executive Committee of the SBC were received without objection and with few questions from the messengers.

Paige Patterson, Al Mohler, J.D. Greear, David Platt and Danny Akin served as panelists during Baptist 21’s luncheon for young leaders in New Orleans.

At Tuesday’s Baptist 21 luncheon, hundreds of young people balanced turkey sandwiches and chocolate chip cookies on their laps as six Southern Baptist leaders reminded them of the price that was paid for the theological stability they enjoy today.

Paige Patterson, Al Mohler, Fred Luter, Danny Akin, J.D. Greear and David Platt weighed in during a panel discussion of the Conservative Resurgence (Southern Baptists’ return to orthodox doctrine beginning in the late 1970s) and the future of the SBC. As conversation continues to simmer over the surge of Reformed theology in the SBC, the panelists, who themselves represent a variety of theological perspectives, urged their listeners to hold fast to the inerrancy of Scripture.

“What was gained can be so quickly lost,” Mohler said. “It was excruciating, it was difficult, it was a near-fought thing, in the sense that it could have gone in the other direction. There was a victory that created a precious opportunity that’s a stewardship that we know can be lost at any time…

Every single year that passes is going to be more difficult, in terms of our cultural context. There are going to be issues we don’t even know to imagine today that your generation is going to have to imagine. It’s going to require the full wealth of conviction; if you do not nail your ministry to the foundational truth of the inerrancy of God’s word, you will – it’s not a question of if, it’s a question of when – you will go off the tracks.

It is essential from the very beginning to say, ‘This is where I’m going to stand, this is where I’m going to go in my ministry. This is a non-negotiable and quite frankly, I want the world to know it.”

Pastor Fred Luter balances serious subjects with joyful repartee while preaching at the Pastors’ Conference on the eve of his election as SBC President.

Posted by Eric Reed

A newspaper profile of Fred Luter pointed out the ways he will be a new face for Southern Baptists. Beyond race, Luter will bring a smile as the chief representative of the denomination, something that is lacking in our history of leadership by serious, white middle-age pastors, the report said.

Not that Luter isn’t serious. He is very serious about the traditional values of Southern Baptists, both theologically and culturally. His sermon that closed the Pastors Conference on the eve of his election as theconvention’s first African American president was a fiery litany of the ills of times—broken homes, crime, racism, abortion, homosexual lifestyles—and the hope, the only hope we have in the gospel of Jesus Christ. But this energetic dance of oratory was punctuated by self-effacing confessions of personal sin and redemption, and joyous grins attesting the effects of Christ in his life.

Fred Luter is serious about the joy of his salvation.

“I love to laugh,” he told the reporter. “I love to have a good time.” And those who hear Pastor Luter preach know it’s true. “If anybody has joy, if anybody has peace and happiness, it should be us,” he said.

If the perception persists that “Baptists don’t have any fun, that we don’t laugh—we don’t have any joy, I would love to change that perception,” Luter said.
Luter is equally serious about making the fuller ethnic representation a fact of life in all areas of Southern Baptist life.

“If we stop appointing African Americans or Asians or Hispanics to leadership roles in this convention after my term is over, we failed. We absolutely failed,” Luter said at a news conference after his historic election.

Luter summarized his election as “a genuine, authentic move by this convention that says our doors are open, and the only way they can see that is not just putting up an African American president, but seeing other ethnic groups inother areas of this convention. Time will tell and I’ll be a cheerleader promoting that.”

Luter and others described his election, at a national convention held in his own hometown of New Orleans, as providential. After a lengthy season of prayer, Luter and his wife agreed to put his name forward as a candidate in January. No other candidates emerged, and Luter was elected unopposed on the first day of the annual meeting.

Messengers stood and applauded for several moments as the convention’s vote was cast for the lone candidate, cheering and whooping and waving their ballots in the air. Some wept at the election of the African American pastor, seen by many as a fitting sign of repentance of the denomination’s birth in a time of slavery.

“There will be some pitfalls,” Luter said of his service as SBC president, “but I hope I will learn from them and study more on things I anticipate being asked.” Already Luter has faced the national media, answering questions about the role of race in the mostly white denomination. Luter said he hopes to be known as a man of God who “loves being part of this convention.”

And he smiles when he says it.