“One Mind, One Voice” will be the theme of the 2024 Southern Baptist Convention Annual Meeting June 11-12 in Indianapolis, and Romans 15:5-6 will serve as the background passage.
The theme was central to SBC President Bart Barber’s message at a recent International Mission Board’s Sending Service. Addressing missionaries entering the field, he spoke of the need for collective Southern Baptist support to take the gospel to the nations. A potential obstacle to missions support, he said, “is if our differences cause us to reach a point where we struggle to cooperate.”
Barber told Baptist Press that Romans 15 “provides us with several commands from God as to how we should navigate differences with one another over small differences in doctrine.”
There are areas of agreement and areas that require bearing with one another over differences. All of it, he said, is “for the purpose so that we can come together and be of the same mind with one another, with the same voice with one another … to give glory to God, the Father of our Lord, Jesus Christ.”
CONSTITUTIONAL AMENDMENT
A motion made by Virginia pastor Mike Law at the 2022 annual meeting received a slight amendment in New Orleans last June before receiving first approval at the 2023 annual meeting. The amendment must receive a second vote of two-thirds majority in Indianapolis. The amendment adds a sixth point to the third article of the constitution that states, “Only churches that affirm, appoint or employ only men as any kind of pastor or elder as qualified by Scripture, would be considered to be in friendly cooperation with the SBC.”
PRESIDENTIAL ELECTION
Six candidates have been nominated for the office of SBC president: Jared Moore, of Crossville, Tenn.; Bruce Frank, of Asheville, N.C.; Clint Pressley, of Charlotte, N.C.; Mike Keahbone, of Lawton, Okla.; David Allen, of Cordova, Tenn.; and Dan Spencer, of Sevierville, Tenn.
A schedule for the SBC Annual Meeting is available at www.sbcannualmeeting.net.
— Compiled from BP news sources.