“Men, stop acting like five-year-olds. Women, stop treating your husbands like five-year-olds. Men, stop leaving your pants on the floor, or your wives will pick them up—and wear them.”
Josh Bailey, from the introduction to his sermon at the SBC Pastor’s Conference.
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.
|
By Nate Adams On the cover date of this issue, I should be in New Orleans at the 2012 Southern Baptist Convention. A number of you will be there too, and I look forward to seeing you following the Pastors’ Conference Monday night, at the IBSA reception for Illinois Baptists and friends. But I’ve also talked recently with people who will not be with us at the Southern Baptist Convention, and for pretty good reasons. For example, our middle son Noah will be a senior next year at Judson University. He serves part-time during the school year as youth minister at Calvary Baptist Church in Elgin, and this summer he is doing a 10-week internship there. During the week of the SBC, Noah will be leading his first World Changers youth mission trip to Owensboro, Kentucky. His three-van caravan will stop here in Springfield to pick up four students from his home church, Western Oaks Baptist Church, and to spend the night at our house. The next morning they will head out for Kentucky at the same time we leave for New Orleans. I asked Noah if he would like to attend the national SBC with me, and then found that for a number of reasons that was the only week his group could participate in a World Changers project. He grinned at me and asked, “Missions or meetings, Dad – which is more important?” In another conversation with a leading pastor in our state I asked, “Will I see you in New Orleans?” He too replied that his church’s summer missions plans would find him in Chicago that week. For several years, his church has partnered with smaller churches in the Chicago area. This pastor personally leads a sizable group of all ages from his church to lead VBS, perform manual labor, and assist fledgling church plants. I think my pastor friend may have thought I was implying that he should make the SBC a priority, and so he started to explain why they needed to do the mission trip that same week. “No explanation necessary,” I assured him. I don’t mean by either of these examples to imply that attending the national SBC is not important. I mean, that’s where I’ll be, and important things transpire there. But important things will transpire in Owensboro and in Chicago that week too. And part of me wishes I were going to be in one of those places as you read this, instead of New Orleans. Maybe it’s a good question for us to ask ourselves this summer, as we plan our various conferences and vacations and weekends and even our church activities at home. Where else could we be? Is where we’re planning to go simply serving ourselves, or our families, or even our churches, or are we going somewhere to actively carry the Gospel or serve someone in the name of Christ? I’m going to conclude that it’s reasonable and even potentially important for me to be at the SBC in New Orleans as you read this. The relationships and decisions that take place there can significantly impact our work together as Illinois Baptists. But while I’m in those meetings I may occasionally be looking out the window and praying for the groups I know that are doing something that perhaps is even more important. Nate Adams is executive director of the Illinois Baptist State Association. |
iB2 News 