INDIANAPOLIS – Though many veteran Southern Baptist Convention observers had speculated that a run-off was likely with six nominees, Georgia pastor Johnny Hunt was elected as convention president on the first ballot with 52.94 percent of the 5,856 votes cast at the SBC annual meeting in Indianapolis.

With nearly a 31 percent margin, Hunt, pastor of First Baptist Church, Woodstock, Ga. since December 1986, was elected over the closest of the other five nominees, Frank Cox, another Georgia pastor, who garnered 1,286 votes, or 21.96 percent. Avery Willis, MasterLife author and former president of the Indonesian Baptist Seminary in Semarang, Indonesia, was third with 962 votes, or 16.43 percent.

During Hunt’s 21-year tenure at First Baptist, Woodstock, church membership has increased from 1,027 to 16,495. Current average church worship attendance is 6,180.

Woodstock relocated to an 82-acre site in the fall of 2004. The $54 million sanctuary, which seats 7,500, hosts two morning worship services. Since 1987, the congregation has sent out more than 135 missionaries and started more than 78 churches.

The congregation gave $393,798, or 2.2 percent, through the Cooperative Program from total undesignated receipts of $17,807,317. The church’s total mission expenditures were $3.3 million, with $175,000 given for the Lottie Moon Christmas Offering for International Missions.

Other nominees included Bill Wagner, president of Olivet University International in San Francisco, Calif., with 255 votes, or 4.35 percent; Lewisville, N.C. pastor Les Puryear, with 188 votes, or 3.21 percent; and Buena Vista, Calif. pastor Wiley Drake, with 45 votes, or .77 percent.

Kentucky pastor Bill Henard won the first vice presidency, defeating two Georgia pastors, John Connell of Savannah and Crist Camden of Athens. Henard,?pastor of Porter Memorial Baptist Church, Lexington, is president of the Kentucky Baptist Convention and chairman of the board of the SBC’s LifeWay Christian Resources. He received 1,748 votes, or 73.23 percent of the 2,387 ballots cast.

In one for the SBC history books, the vote for?second vice president resulted in a tie.?John Newland, pastor of Fall Creek Baptist Church, Indianapolis, and Doug Mulkey, pastor of Mount Zion Baptist Church in Canton, Ga., both received 769 votes, or 30.24 percent each, in a four-man race. Newland was elected in the runoff, receiving??470 votes, for 58.24 percent.

Recording Secretary John Yeats, public relations director for the Louisiana Baptist Convention, and Registration Secretary Jim Wells, director of missions for Tri-County Baptist Association in southwest Missouri, were both reelected unopposed.