Editor’s Note: Wayne Bray, pastor of First Baptist Simpsonville/Upstate Church in South Carolina, was elected president of the 2027 SBC Pastors’ Conference in Indianapolis.
Pastors should be thinking about how God might use their churches and the Southern Baptist Convention not only now but 100 years from now, Jimmy Scroggins said at the SBC Pastors’ Conference June 8 in Orlando.
“We need to be building churches that are going to last another 100 years,” Jimmy Scroggins told attendees June 9 during the final session of the 2026 SBC Pastors’ Conference. (Photo by Luc Stringer)
“The stakes are high, and 100 years isn’t that long. There’s a lot on the line for what we’re doing around here,” said Scroggins, pastor of Family Church in West Palm Beach, Fla.
He relayed a legendary anecdote of President John F. Kennedy touring the space center in 1962 and encountering a janitor sweeping the hallways. When the president asked what he was doing, the janitor reportedly replied, “I’m helping put a man on the moon.”
“What are we doing here? Why are we gathered? … We need to be building churches that are going to last another 100 years,” Scroggins said. “We’re reaching people who are going to go somewhere that we will not be able to go. They are going to the future. … To move our churches and our convention into the future, every one of us has a part to play.”
Scroggins pointed to Zechariah 4:8-10 where Zerubbabel was tasked with holding a plumb line to rebuild the temple.
“I know that some of you might feel like what you are doing is obscure and nobody knows your name. You might even walk the halls of the convention and you don’t see a single person that you know, but everyone here has a part to play,” Scroggins said.
Don’t despise the life God has given you, he said. “God has called you and your neighborhood church to put a man on the moon.”
Pastors never really know what is at stake when they serve God, Scroggins said.
“Don’t despise the day of small things. The angels of God rejoice to see the plumb line in your hand. So, preach the Gospel, Southern Baptists. Serve where you are planted. Win the next generation. Love your neighborhood. Send missionaries to the nations until Jesus comes again,” Scroggins said. “Brothers and sisters, let’s put a man on the moon because you have no idea how the work that you are doing this Sunday will matter in 100 years.”
Cliff Lea
Cliff Lea, pastor of First Baptist Church in Leesburg, Fla., preached from Luke 18:1-8 about the persistent widow and said prayerlessness is the greatest threat to the pastor’s life.
“There is absolutely nothing I would rather do than be a servant of the Lord in His church, but we can’t kid ourselves and act like it is easy,” Lea said.
“We know that it’s challenging, and we know that there are people with the gift of discouragement. We know that there are situations that almost always seem impossible. … That’s the moment where God says it is time to pray and not give up.”
The widow in the parable showed how not to give up, and she showed that prayer will pay off, he said.
“We know that sometimes God doesn’t answer our prayers like we want Him to. Sometimes he says for us to slow down, and He searches our heart,” Lea said. “Sometimes He asks us to wait. But oftentimes He says yes.
“Even if He says no, the process pays off in our soul. We should be more dedicated to pressing in with prayer until we receive God’s answer,” Lea said.
Unlike the widow with no connections and no advocates, believers can feel good about their standing with God.
“I’m not some desperate widow that can’t get an audience with a mean judge. I’m an elect child of God that has a sovereign, wise, loving Heavenly Father that’s longing for me to call out to Him because He has a special relationship with me,” Lea said.
“He doesn’t give me everything I want, but He knows what I need, when I need it and the best way to bring it into my life. He has chosen that the method for me to acquire it from Him is prayer.”
The practice of prayer shows that a person has faith, Lea said. “If we are a prayerless people, according to Christ, we are a faithless people. When Christ comes, He wants to see His people praying, calling out to Him and seeking His face.”
Lea then led a time of prayer for the Convention and specifically for the pastors and their wives in attendance.
Pastors’ Conf. speakers: SBC must unify in doctrine, evangelism
Southern Baptists must remain unified in doctrine, in spirit and in reaching the next generation for Christ, speakers said June 8 during the afternoon session of the Southern Baptist Convention Pastors’ Conference.
Monday afternoon’s speakers at the Orange County Convention Center in Orlando included Dean Inserra, Willy Rice and H.B. Charles.
America’s continuing cultural decline is a great opportunity for churches, said Dean Inserra in a sermon June 8 at the 2026 SBC Pastors’ Conference in Orlando. Inserra is pastor of City Church in Tallahassee. (Photo by Luc Stringer)
Dean Inserra
Each generation in America is drifting progressively farther from Christ, like Israel drifted from the Lord in the biblical book of Judges, said Inserra, pastor of City Church in Tallahassee, Fla. But faithful churches can reverse that trend.
“What an opportunity for our churches,” he said. “What an opportunity for us to be an answer to that prayer of workers being sent into a massive harvest of the next generation.”
A first step to stopping spiritual drift is to “reach our own kids,” Inserra said. That will require discipleship in Christian families as well as churches committed to next generation ministry.
“I love senior adults,” he said. “We have tons of them in our church. But if your senior adults are headed out on the church minibus to see the leaves change but your youth students have to sell baked goods to make it to camp, something is off.”
Pastors must adjust their preaching to reverse generational drift, Inserra said. They should correct erosion of the Gospel, “Instagram influence” that views Jesus as a fun friend without demanding commitment and “generic theism” that seeks salvation by works.
A stronger rebuke from pastors should address “the attitude many of the next generation’s parents have toward the local church,” he said.
In 1990s youth ministries, today’s parents were taught repeatedly that “a relationship with Jesus” was all that mattered, Inserra said. Without ongoing discipleship to supplement that message, many decided as adults that they could have a “relationship with Jesus” anywhere, including their children’s leisure activities that trump church attendance.
Yet spiritual renewal is possible if churches change their focus and urgency – not necessarily their style of ministry – to call the next generation to follow Jesus.
“What if we told the next generation, ‘You have to run me over to spend an eternity apart from God in a real place called hell,’” he said.
Willy Rice
The SBC must center its unity on the doctrine taught in Scripture, said Rice, pastor of Calvary Baptist Church in Clearwater, Fla.
“If we are not together in doctrinal truth, then nothing else will keep us together,” said Rice. “It is the truth of Jesus revealed in Scripture” that grounds our unity. “Our only hope for unity is Gospel truth.”
Preaching from 1 Samuel 15 about King Saul’s decline into disobedience, Rice said the compromise of Saul began when he traded obedience from the heart for mere religious observances. Pragmatism and yielding to pressure from people precipitated Saul’s decline and led to a confrontation by the prophet Samuel.
Saul ignored the correction, Rice said, which should serve as a warning for Southern Baptists.
“It is not a sign of greatness to refuse correction,” he said. True revival “begins when sins are confessed, hearts are renewed and hearts are humbled.”
Refusing to heed correction led to Saul’s collapse, Rice said. The tragic story of Israel’s first king gives Southern Baptists three truths to remember:
- Value obedience over observance.
Compromise begins when we fear what the watching world will say about us more than what God thinks of us, he said. “Fear the gaze of the masses.”
- Value faithfulness over fervency.
Like Southern Baptists, Saul was zealous to accomplish his mission – defeating the Amalekites in 1 Samuel 15, Rice said. But his unchecked zeal for the mission led to compromise in order to achieve a desired result.
Due to missionary zeal, Baptists “excel in counting like few others,” including baptism statistics, church members and missionaries sent, he said. But “if we believe our missional fervency justifies” any compromise of doctrine, “we are mistaken.”
- Value God’s kingdom over our kingdom.
“The future health of our movement is not guaranteed,” Rice said of the SBC. “It depends on our willingness to obey.”
H.B. Charles
Believers and churches must walk together in spiritual unity, said Charles, pastor of Shiloh Metropolitan Baptist Church in Jacksonville, Fla.
“Too many churches split, fight and die over congregational conflict,” he said, preaching from Ephesians 4:1-6. While the essential truths of Christianity are worth fighting for, too much church division is about “personal territory rather than doctrinal fidelity.”
Walking in unity requires believers to live up to their calling as followers of Jesus, Charles said. That includes pursuing Christlikeness by being humble, gentle, patient and bearing with one another in love. Pastors should set the example in all these areas.
“The church should be led by men that are peacemakers, not troublemakers,” he said.
True unity is produced by the Holy Spirit, Charles said. Believers do not manufacture it. Rather, they maintain it by acting in love, refusing to gossip and being slow to take offense. As they do those things, Jesus bonds His church together.
“God forbid that we would build up walls that the blood of Jesus already has torn down,” he said.
Believers are mandated to walk in unity because their unity reflects the unity of the Father, Son and Holy Spirit, Charles said. “The unity of the church is securely rooted in the unity of the Godhead.”
Because the Holy Spirit united believers, sins against the church body are sins against the Spirit, he said. “True Christian unity is not institutional … It is the unity of the Spirit.”
Because Jesus is the Church’s one Lord, all believers must be united in obedience to Him, Charles said. Because God is the Church’s Father, His people must act like spiritual brothers and sisters.
“Be just as eager to maintain the unity as we are to maintain the truth,” he said.
Holiness, unity, forgiveness urged in Pastors’ Conf. opening session
Two prayers of Jesus during His final 24 hours of life drew focus during the opening session of the Southern Baptist Convention Pastors’ Conference June 7 at the Orange County Convention Center in Orlando, Fla.
The session’s preachers were Stephen Rummage and Herb Reavis. Worship was led by the choir and worship team from Lakes Church in Lakeland, Fla.
Stephen Rummage
Jesus’ heart is for His people to glorify God, live holy lives and be unified, said Rummage, executive director of the Florida Baptist Convention. Preaching from John 17:1-26, Rummage said Jesus articulated those principles in prayer the night before He was crucified.
“If you want to know someone’s heart, listen to them pray,” he said, noting that John 17 is the longest of the approximately 25 prayers of Jesus recorded in the Gospels. As Jesus prays, “you hear His heart.”
First, Jesus prayed for Himself and His Father to be glorified. That occurs, Rummage said, when pastors proclaim the Gospel in personal evangelism and from the pulpit.
“So many times we get our eyes on something else, even in the church,” he said, “and we stop giving glory to Jesus” by proclaiming “His free offer of redemption.”
Jesus also prayed for His people to be sanctified. Sanctification means being set apart or holy, Rummage said. It entails having full joy in Jesus, being cleansed by the Word of God and being distinct from the world. As a boat in the water is good but water in a boat is bad, a Christian in the world is good but the world in a Christian is bad.
“The world will tell you that holiness and joy are enemies, that you can’t be sanctified and happy at the same time. That’s not what Jesus says,” Rummage said.
Third, Jesus prayed for His people to be unified. That prayer referenced both Jesus’ apostles and every subsequent generation of believers who would come to faith through their witness, Rummage said.
Unity is not uniformity. Rather, he said, it is doctrinal agreement on the teaching of Scripture, spiritual unity like God the Father and God the Son possess with each other and missional unity as believers take the Gospel to the world.
“When our hearts are tuned to the Gospel of Jesus Christ and the eternal Word of God,” Rummage said, “and when our eyes are on Jesus, when He’s setting the tempo, when He’s calling the tune, then He will use us as He prayed.”
Herb Reavis
Jesus wants His followers to extend and experience forgiveness, said Reavis, pastor of North Jacksonville Baptist Church in Jacksonville, Fla. He underscored those realities by preaching from Luke 23:32-34, Jesus’ prayer for God to forgive those who crucified Him.
“The final words of Jesus are perhaps his most important,” Reavis said. “On the cross, man was doing his worst, but Jesus Christ was doing His best.” This prayer reveals “some extraordinary truths.”
- It reveals something about the beauty of Christ.
It was beautiful that Jesus possessed “unshakable faith” in His heavenly Father through the agony of crucifixion, Reavis said. That faith led Jesus to forgive those who killed Him and ask the Father to forgive them as well.
“Victims of crucifixion usually shrieked in pain and cursed and spit on the spectators,” he said. “Christ could have called 10,000 angels to deliver Him, or He could have called down judgment on those people crying, ‘Crucify Him!’ But He did not seek revenge. He was practicing what He preached.”
- Jesus’ prayer reveals something about the body of Christ.
The Church is Jesus’ body in the world today, carrying out His work, Reavis said. As Jesus did on the cross, the Church must pray for people’s spiritual needs, welcome all people and ask God to save them.
God “is still forgiving sinners and saving them from the devil’s hell,” he said.
- Jesus’ prayer reveals something about the burden of Christ.
Jesus was burdened not only to forgive sinners but also to live out the commands of Scripture, Reavis said, a pattern pastors must emulate.
“You can stand up in a pulpit, and you can be polished, and you can hold people in the palm of your hand,” he said. “But if in your everyday life you’re not walking in the Word, you’ll be found out and they will not listen to a thing you have to say.”
Jesus’ prayer from the cross should lead every pastor to ensure he has experienced Christ’s forgiveness, Reavis said. Then each pastor should extend forgiveness to those who have hurt him in ministry—in big and small ways.
“Let the whiners whine,” he said. “Let the gripers gripe. Let the pouters pout. Because of a blood-stained cross and an empty tomb, I stand before a holy God forgiven.”
David Roach is a writer in Mobile, Ala.
