By David E. Hankins, Executive Director of the Louisiana Baptist Convention   It was good and hot. The hot part you could surmise.  After all, it was in Phoenix, Ariz. in June! But it was also good – good fellowship, good preaching, good conduct. Although the attendance was lower than expected, the business was completed efficiently and orderly. The officers executed their work with dignity and warmth. The reports from our ministries were inspiring and encouraging. Both mission boards commissioned new missionaries as a part of their presentations.   The emphasis this year centered around 1) the urgency of reaching the nations with the gospel, and 2) the importance of pursuing this together through Cooperative Program ministries and through all our denominational partners. There were no task force reports and no issues that embroiled the convention in controversy. Overall, it was a quiet, peaceful meeting, marked by goodwill and a desire to move forward in kingdom advance.   Perhaps the most significant facet of the 2011 SBC meeting is that it was the inaugural convention for three of our most important leaders: the new Executive Committee President Frank Page, the new NAMB President Kevin Ezell, … [Read more...]

By Kelly Boggs, Editor Baptist Message   “For the great enemy of truth is very often not the lie – deliberate, contrived and dishonest – but the myth – persistent, persuasive, and unrealistic,” President John F. Kennedy told the 1962 graduating class of Yale University.   America’s 35th president continued, “We subject all facts to a prefabricated set of interpretations. We enjoy the comfort of opinion without the discomfort of thought.”   Though Kennedy spoke these words almost half a century ago his wisdom has never been more relevant, especially when applied to the subject of homosexuality.   Homosexual activists and many in the media have for some time now touted research done by Alfred Kinsey in the 1940s that asserted 10 percent of males in the U.S. were homosexual.   The fact that Kinsey’s controversial research methods and suspect findings have been subject to debate and dispute has not stopped activists or the media from continuing to trumpet the 10 percent figure.   The motive, of course, is clear: If it were true that a significant portion of the population were engaged in a particular behavior, how could that behavior be deemed deviant? Perhaps it is … [Read more...]

By Argile Smith, Associate Dean of Pastoral Ministry Louisiana College   What do you look for in a pastor? What kind of profile should he fit?   Answering these questions raises an important issue for pastors and congregations alike. At issue is the way we arrive at our perspectives regarding who a pastor should be and what he should do.   If you’re like most church members, you love your pastor. Because you love him, you want him to fulfill his calling so he can glorify the Lord in his ministry.   Sometimes, however, our love for our pastor doesn’t prevent us from developing some rather unrealistic expectations of him. We can, unintentionally, allow unreasonable standards to creep into our thinking about a pastor’s profile. That’s when we can get into trouble.   Unrealistic expectations of a pastor come to us from a variety of notions that we collect along the way.   For instance, more than a few of us tend to gather all of the positive character traits and exemplary work habits of other pastors we have known through the years. Then we blend them together to form what we consider to be an appropriate job description for a pastor.   When we give in to … [Read more...]

By Archie England, NOBTS Professor of Old Testament and Hebrew   Question: Enemies of God’s people deserve a swift destruction. Right? If so, then why did God send Jonah to spare the wicked Assyrians?   Archie England responds: Jonah detested the command of God! “Go to Nineveh,” God had said (1:2).   Jonah refused to do so: He got on a ship to “escape the presence of the Lord.”   He later revealed why: He feared that a just God might actually bring salvation to an unjust people (4:2). Jonah feared that the goodness of God might do kindness to a nation that deserved only swift destruction. Such thought angered the prophet (4:1), motivating him to subvert God’s plan to send him as a messenger of warning to the people of Nineveh. Jonah detested the Assyrians! They deserved judgment.   God, instead, granted His enemies compassion and grace. From least to greatest, all of Nineveh heard (somehow a mad, Hebrew-speaking prophet communicated with an Accadian-speaking population) and repented to Israel’s God. Humbled by a rather cryptic prophetic proclamation (3:4), all of Nineveh fasted, believed and called upon the Lord, and turned from wickedness (3:5-10). Jonah was … [Read more...]

By Quinn Lavespere, Message Staff Writer [img_assist|nid=7398|title=Woodridge Shreveport|desc=With Woodbridge Pastor Floyd Davis (center) battling illness, his deacons, staff (Minister of Music Dick Powell (left) and church secretary Lois Gordon (right), and the church body rallied around him and drew closer together.|link=none|align=right|width=640|height=480]SHREVEPORT – Sometimes, God uses the most devastating situations to bring about the best of things for His people. Despite losing the services of longtime pastor Floyd Davis and associate pastor Chuck McInturf to illnesses for several months, Woodridge Baptist Church has prospered. “I tell people that this all surprised me, but it didn’t surprise God,” Davis said. “None of this caught God off guard.” Davis, who is in his 33rd year as Woodridge Baptist pastor, was diagnosed last Thanksgiving with aplastic anemia. The pastor recalled details of his battle with the disease. “About a month and a half before I was diagnosed, I started noticing that I was experiencing shortness of breath, and it got progressively worse, Davis said. “By the time I got in the hospital, my shortness of breath had gotten severe, and I got an infection and was running a high fever.” Though he … [Read more...]

By Michael Foust, Baptist Press [img_assist|nid=7400|title=SBC Messengers|desc=Messengers to the Southern Baptist Convention Annual Meeting vote during the SBC Executive Committee report in the morning session June 14 at the Phoenix Convention Center. More than 4,700 messengers registered for the 158th annual meeting.|link=none|align=left|width=640|height=398]PHOENIX (BP) – Southern Baptist Convention messengers meeting in Phoenix June 14-15 adopted an historic report encouraging ethnic diversity, witnessed dozens of leaders standing together in support of a landmark unity pledge, and saw hundreds of pastors and laypeople volunteer to lead their churches to embrace one of the world’s 3,800 unengaged people groups. It was the lowest-attended annual meeting in 67 years, with just over 4,800 in attendance, but the substance of the meeting led plenty who attended to argue it shouldn’t be judged on numbers. “I do believe it could prove to be the most spiritually significant convention over the last 50 years,” Southern Baptist Convention President Bryant Wright, who was re-elected to another one-year term, told Baptist Press after the Phoenix gathering. Wright pointed to the sluggish economy and to the travel time from most SBC … [Read more...]

By Barbara Denman, Baptist Press   PHOENIX (BP) – Atlanta-area pastor Bryant Wright was elected to a second term as president of the Southern Baptist Convention, defeating California pastor Wiley Drake by a vote of 2,274-102 June 14 at the SBC annual meeting in Phoenix.   Wright, pastor of Johnson Ferry Baptist Church in Marietta, was nominated to a second term by David Platt, senior pastor of The Church at Brook Hills in Birmingham, Ala. Drake, pastor of First Southern Baptist Church in Buena Park, Calif., nominated himself.   [img_assist|nid=7402|title=SBC Officers|desc=Newly elected officers of the Southern Baptist Convention are: Bryant Wright, president and pastor of Johnson Ferry Baptist Church in Marietta Ga.; Fred Luter, first vice president and pastor of Franklin Avenue Baptist Church in New Orleans, La.; Eric Thomas, second vice president and pastor of First Baptist Norfolk in Norfolk, Va.; John Yeats, recording secretary and communications director of the Louisiana Baptist Convention. Not pictured is James H. Wells, registration secretary and director of missions for the Tri-County Baptist Association in Nixa, Mo.|link=none|align=left|width=478|height=640]Of the 2,384 votes cast, Wright … [Read more...]

By Barbara Denman, Baptist Press   PHOENIX (BP) – Even as Southern Baptist Convention messengers considered a set of recommendations to increase the ethnic diversity of the convention’s leadership, they faced the choice between an African American pastor from Louisiana and a Chinese-American layperson from Phoenix for first vice president of the SBC.   Fred Luter, senior pastor of Franklin Avenue Baptist Church in New Orleans, was elected first vice president over Rick Ong, a member of First Chinese Baptist Church in Phoenix.   Of the 2,012 ballots cast June 14 in Phoenix, Luter received 1,558 or 77 percent of the votes while Ong received 441 or 22 percent of the votes; 13 votes were disallowed.[img_assist|nid=7404|title=1st VP|desc=Fred Luter, senior pastor of Franklin Avenue Baptist Church in New Orleans, was elected first vice president over Rick Ong, a member of First Chinese Baptist Church in Phoenix. Standing behind Luter is David Crosby, pastor of First New Orleans.|link=none|align=left|width=640|height=444]   Daniel Akin, president of Southeastern Baptist Theological Seminary in Wake Forest, N.C. nominated Luter, calling him “one of Southern Baptists’ most popular and beloved … [Read more...]

By Mark Kelly, Baptist Press   PHOENIX (BP) – Seven recommendations from the SBC Executive Committee were approved by messengers during the opening session of the SBC annual meeting June 14.   Four recommendations related to the “Great Commission Resurgence” report adopted at the 2010 annual meeting in Orlando, Fla.:   n Providing additional funding for international missions by reducing the Executive Committee’s share of Cooperative Program funding, and proportionately increasing International Mission Board funding. The proposal adopted by messengers calls for reducing the Executive Committee budget share from 3.4 percent to 3.2 percent in 2011-12, with a goal of over time reducing it to 2.4 percent.   [img_assist|nid=7406|title=Messengers|desc=Messengers to the Southern Baptist Convention Annual Meeting vote during the SBC Executive Committee report in the morning session June 14 at the Phoenix Convention Center. More than 4,700 messengers registered for the 158th annual meeting.|link=none|align=right|width=640|height=398]n Adding a new Annual Church Profile reporting category called “Great Commission Giving” to highlight each church’s financial commitment to Southern Baptist mission … [Read more...]

By Tim Ellsworth, Baptist Press   PHOENIX (BP) – Pastors are responsible to lead their churches to engage the world’s unreached people groups with the Gospel, David Platt said in the convention sermon at the Southern Baptist Convention’s annual meeting June 15.   Platt, pastor of The Church at Brook Hills in Birmingham, Ala., noted that people groups by the thousands worldwide are unreached for Christ. “This is not a problem for the International Mission Board to address,” Platt said. “This is a problem for every local church in this convention to address.”   Platt emphasized that he was not advocating the neglect of local ministries and missions but added that “at the same time, global missions is tragically neglected.”   He pointed to an example from northern Yemen, which has a population of about 8 million people but only about 20 to 30 Christians.[img_assist|nid=7408|title=David Platt|desc=David Platt, pastor of The Church at Brook Hills in Birmingham, Ala., gives the convention sermon “calling every pastor” to lead churches to reach unreached people groups with the Gospel. About 6,750 people groups around the world are unreached, he … [Read more...]