Keith Shorter, pastor of Mount Airy Baptist Church in Easley and new president of the South Carolina Baptist Convention, has had the opportunity to prepare for his assignment by serving over the past year as the first president-elect of the SCBC. Now he is ready to move forward with a strategy that revolves around the theme, “Unite.”
As president-elect, he has been able to attend meetings and get to know the Baptist building staff. “It has been a great year learning how to be president,” he said, “a wonderful year of preparation that past presidents did not have.”
As a pastor (20 years at Mount Airy), he has focused on evangelism and missions and intends to make both a major part of his year as president.
The motto he is promoting for the 2017 annual meeting is, “Don’t just go to a meeting — serve the city.”
“I am asking South Carolina Baptists to take a mission trip to Columbia next year on Tuesday, Nov. 7,” he said. “We will partner with organizations already working in the city and do meaningful acts of service while we are in town.
“I am planning to bring 50 to 100 people from Mount Airy, and I am asking pastors across the state to bring groups to Columbia to serve. The Tuesday evening service will be a celebration of what we did Tuesday afternoon.”
Kevin Ezell, president of the North American Mission Board, will speak at the Tuesday evening session, and South Carolina Baptists will have a commissioning service for all those churches planning on going on a mission trip in 2018.
Shorter plans to ask state Baptist collegiate ministers to help him enlist college students for the Tuesday afternoon time of service and witness. He is also asking people who come to Columbia to bring an offering that can be distributed to ministries in the area that are effectively serving the community, as well as Southern Baptist mission causes.
He said the three goals of his presidency are to influence, encourage and impact. He wants to “influence pastors and churches to be involved in mission partnerships,” to “encourage bivocational pastors and small churches to partner with other churches in doing Great Commission work,” and to “encourage state convention staff and pastors to work together for the kingdom.”
Shorter plans to speak in as many associations and pastors’ gatherings as possible to “explain our plans and build momentum for the Tuesday afternoon time of mission service.”
He also wants to lead three “vision trips” with pastors and leaders from across the state. “I want to introduce pastors to church planters and missionaries who need kingdom partners,” he said, “and I plan to enlist past presidents to be part of a team to help us plan and promote the annual meeting.”
His theme of “Unite” focuses on the four priorities already adopted by the convention: mission participation (mobilization), evangelism, church planting, and church health (revitalization).
“I have had a year to prepare and plan, and the Lord has placed a vision on my heart of what I want us to accomplish,” Shorter said. He wants the annual meeting in 2017 to be more than a meeting. “I want us to ask ourselves if we left the city in better shape because we were there,” he said.
Shorter is a graduate of Carson-Newman University (where he met his wife, Lisa), Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary, and New Orleans Baptist Theological Seminary, where he earned his doctor of ministry degree. While at NOBTS, he studied under president Chuck Kelley, who at the time was a professor of evangelism.
The Shorters have three grown children: Kelly, who is married to Morgan; Lauren, a staff member of Marathon Church; and Jonathan, a senior at North Greenville University majoring in media ministry.
Shorter believes the South Carolina Baptist Convention is moving in the right direction. “There is a positive outlook in our convention now,” he said. “I believe it is a new day.”
That new day encompasses, for the first time, a president who has had a year to deliberately prepare for his time of service.