Decades after serving for 20 years as a church planter in Columbus, Ohio, Delano McMinn is returning there June 16-17 when the Southern Baptist Convention holds is annual meeting in the city.

Southern Baptists have been planting churches in Ohio since the 1930s, when Southerners who moved to the area wanted churches more like the ones they were accustomed to in the South.

McMinn began his work in Columbus in 1960, just six years after the organization of the State Convention of Baptists in Ohio. John Kurtz, who is 94 and living in a retirement home in Nashville, was the Ohio convention’s first president. McMinn recalls that time period as an open door for reaching people with the gospel. “Evangelism was really moving in those days,” he said. “We had 19 missions in the city, and our director of missions, Ross Hughes, had a great vision for starting new churches. The people of Columbus received Southern Baptists well in those days.”