By Ronnie Floyd, Southern Baptist Convention president
COLUMBUS, Ohio (BP) – For 11 months, I have had one of the greatest privileges ever given to me by the Lord. Serving as president of the Southern Baptist Convention is one of the most humbling and overwhelming experiences in life and leadership.
With each day, while my burden deepens, my hope exceedingly rises. What an incredible moment God has given to each of us to live at this time in human history. In light of that, I want to share a few things on my heart about our upcoming SBC annual meeting.
Coming together
Yes, coming together is on my heart. I pray we will come together in Columbus, Ohio, on June 16-17.
I pray we will come together in unity. While our uniqueness and various perspectives express themselves at times, we do need to resolve: We will come together, stay together, and leave together as followers of our Lord in our Southern Baptist family.
I pray we will come together in Columbus with great expectation. This expectation does not need to be in men or programs, but in the Lord Himself. He is doing some mighty things among us and I pray when we are together, He will do some mighty things in us. Come expecting God to meet with us powerfully and send us out extraordinarily.
Loving one another
Loving one another is on my heart. As a people who love the Bible so much, we also need to love one another. I have attended at least 31 of our last 35 national Southern Baptist Convention annual meetings. At times, loving one another did not always seem to exist.
Now in the day of endless blogs, articles, emails and interviews, the tendency is to criticize more than love and to create suspicion more than trust.
We need to fall in love with Jesus again. When we do, we will love one another.
Jesus said, “By this all people will know that you are My disciples, if you have love for one another.” (John 13:35) Jesus said it is love that sets us apart from others. May this be said about us.
Celebrating together
God is doing some wonderful things through our churches in the work we do together as Southern Baptists. We need to celebrate together what the Lord is doing.
Even in this critical time in our nation, more than ever, we need the joy of the Lord to be our strength. While sin is abounding in our nation, grace abounds even more. Yes, we need to celebrate together the great grace of our Lord.
Our sessions will be filled with some defining moments. Yet, God alone will create these moments we will never forget. These are moments that deserve our highest celebration together, offered to our Lord Jesus Christ.
