“One sexual predator in our midst is one too many,” Executive Committee president Morris Chapman told messengers to the annual meeting June 10-11 at the Indiana Convention Center, calling on Southern Baptist congregations to be vigilant in protecting their children from sexual predators.
Officers elected during the 151st session of the Southern Baptist Convention meeting are (left to right) Johnny Hunt, pastor of First Baptist Church, Woodstock, Ga., president; Bill Henard, senior pastor, Porter Memorial Baptist Church, Lexington, Ky., first vice president; John Newland, senior pastor, Fall Creek Baptist Church, Indianapolis, second vice president; John Yeats, director of communications for Louisiana Baptist Convention, recording secretary; and Jim Wells, director of missions for Tri-County Baptist Association, Nixa, Mo., registration secretary.“We must determine that when we know someone is a sexual predator, we will expose him and bring charges against him for his crimes, whether he is a pastor, a member of the staff or a member of the church,” Chapman said.
In addition to hearing a report from the Executive Committee study committee charged with studying child abuse, convention messengers elected a Georgia pastor as president, considered resolutions concerning unregenerate church membership and same-sex marriages, and welcomed the unveiling of a National Evangelism Initiative.
The Executive Committee’s recommendation urged churches to screen prospective volunteers and employees with the U.S. Department of Justice’s national sex offender database, but declined to establish a database of Southern Baptist offenders.
The recommendation said the Executive Committee “believes utilizing a reliable and authoritative database is an extremely important initial step of background review Southern Baptist churches should take to provide the highest degree of protection against sexual predators.??
The report, which followed a two-year study on child abuse, stated: “The Executive Committee strongly encourages local congregations to devise policies and execute strategies (1) to be diligent as they choose and supervise their ministers, employees, and volunteers, (2) to be vigorous in their investigations of known or suspected sex abuse within their ranks, and (3) to be honest and forthcoming in revealing the facts to their sister congregations when asked about former ministers, employees, and volunteers.”
Johnny Hunt, pastor of the 16,500-member First Baptist Church, Woodstock, Ga., was elected as convention president from a field of six candidates. He succeeds Frank Page, pastor of First Baptist Church, Taylors, S.C., who completed his second term at this year’s meeting.
At a press conference following his election, Hunt told reporters that “radical change” is needed to stem the tide of denominational decline.
“We’ve been declining as a denomination, and you can’t turn something around until you stop the tide and direction it is going, he said.
Hunt said he wanted to inspire a young generation of pastors to “buy in” and “step up to the plate” in supporting the denomination.
When the 151st session of the SBC convened at the Indiana Convention Center in Indianapolis June 10-11, more than 7,200 registered messengers and numerous guests from the more than 16-million-member denomination gathered from across the country.One of the two most-discussed resolutions adopted by convention messengers advocated biblical standards for church membership, accountability for living like disciples of Jesus and trying to restore members who have dropped out of church life.
Malcolm Yarnell, an associate professor of systematic theology at Southwestern Baptist Seminary, asked for language to be inserted that specifically mentioned the practices of “believers-only baptism by immersion,” the Lord’s Supper and church discipline. After president Page suggested an alternative way to insert the wording into the resolution, the amendment was adopted on a show of ballots.
The second resolution dealt with the California Supreme Court’s decision to reverse the ban on same-same marriages in the state. Discussion centered around an unsuccessful attempt to amend the statement to urge parents to withdraw their children from public schools where sex-education is taught devoid of Christian values.
Among the 23 motions offered by messengers were six proposed changes to the SBC constitution and bylaws that were dispatched to the Executive Committee without discussion. Proposed changes included:
– To provide that presidents of Southern Baptist Convention entities or the president of the Executive Committee are ineligible to serve as SBC president.
– To establish additional criteria for denominational service, such as membership in churches supporting the Cooperative Program, abstention from alcohol and support of the 2000 Baptist Faith & Message or other parallel “declarations of faith.”
– To declare that churches with a female senior pastor are not in cooperation with the convention.; and
– To limit SBC entity trustees to a single seven-year term of service.
Other motions referred to the Executive Committee included reconsidering affiliation of the SBC with the Baptist World Alliance; designing and implementing a form for standardized reporting by SBC seminaries; and translating the Baptist Faith & Message translated into the top five languages most used within the SBC.
During the North American Mission report, president Geoff Hammond, unveiled the National Evangelism Initiative that has been developed by the mission board working in conjunction with state and local Southern Baptist leaders with the encouragement of SBC President Frank Page.
The initiative, called “God’s Plan for Sharing” (GPS), consists of four areas of focus – praying, engaging, sowing and harvesting. The prayer component calls upon Southern Baptists to commit to pray for people who do not have a personal relationship with Christ. The initiative also encourages Christians to engage in witness training, to be intentional in sharing the plan of salvation, and to celebrate God’s activity in the lives of those around them.
“God positions us everyday with opportunities for sharing our faith,” Hammond said. “If you think of a GPS device, it helps get us to our destination. And our destination is every believer sharing, every person hearing by 2020.”
David Dykes, pastor of Green Acres Baptist Church, Tyler, Tex., received this year’s M.E. Dodd Cooperative Program Award.
Dykes has been pastor of the 14,000-member Green Acres Baptist Church since 1991 and has led the church to give more than $18.4 million to various mission causes, including more than $10 million through the Cooperative Program. This year, Green Acres gave more than $1.4 million through CP. Each year, the congregation sends more than 1,000 volunteer missionaries to projects in the United States, Canada, Mexico, Belize, Cuba, Costa Rica, Columbia, Brazil, East and Central Asia and Egypt.
The Southern Baptist Convention annual meeting will convene in Nashville, Tenn., in 2013 and 2019 and in Baltimore, Md., in 2014, according to recommendations approved by messengers. Next year, the annual meeting is scheduled to convene in Louisville, Ky., June 23-24.