Southern Baptist Convention (SBC) President Frank Page has called for unity among Southern Baptists.
Speaking in two different SBC venues in mid-September, Page — pastor of First Baptist Church, Taylors, S.C., who was elected SBC president in June — delivered similar messages about the state of the denomination and about being unified.
“Many of our churches are going through difficult days, and we exist … in a [SBC] that is thought by some to have lost its relevancy,” Page said to the Executive Committee during his first address as SBC president Sept. 18. “In the minds of many … we have become an archaic, burdensome bureaucracy that no longer has relevancy for today or for the day to come.”
During a chapel sermon at Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary in Fort Worth, Texas, Sept. 14, Page said, “Certainly, we know [Satan] has taken away our unity.
“He has removed from our convention, I am afraid, a unity that is at the very heart of what we need to be,” he said.
“There are factions across our convention now … that are so distinct, so despairing, that there is literally no fellowship within some of the groups.
“[Satan] has taken [our] effectiveness … (our) power … (our) attractiveness … so that no longer do lost people yearn to be a part of what God is doing in the churches, but they are repulsed by it,” he said.
In the face of this spiritual battle, Page called on Southern Baptists to be unified in Christ and to trust the Holy Spirit to guide them as they sort through their differences.
“It’s time that we come together, realizing that we are Jesus’ people, and that we believe in the Word of God,” Page said. “And while we may not always agree with various interpretations, we stand as one people in Jesus Christ in commitment to His Word.”
Preaching from Ezekiel 37:1–6 — the story of the valley of dry bones — during his address to the Executive Committee, Page said Southern Baptists must pray for revival across the convention.
“We must beg of our Lord, ‘Lord, let these bones grow again.’ … I believe Jesus Christ is mighty to save, and I believe the Holy Spirit of God wants to do a work in our convention. And that is why for the next two years — if God should grant that to me — I am calling for our convention to ask, ‘Lord … send your reviving Holy Spirit upon this convention.’
“There are factions out there that frighten me — all kinds of groups are pitting themselves, one against the other,” Page said. “… It’s good to have good debate. It’s good to disagree on some things, but Lord, pull us together.”
Southern Baptists, he said, must pray that God will bring them together for a “cooperative mission task.” That task, he noted, historically has been funded through the Cooperative Program.
“[T]he Cooperative Program matters,” he said. “That’s why … I was elected, because the Cooperative Program does matter, and it is that which can pull us together [because] it is the main funding mechanism to do a great ministry and mission work across this world.
“I am afraid … [w]e have said to the world, ‘Merry Christmas. I love you. Buy your own gift. Find your own way. … You’re going to have to find it because we’re not telling you.’
“We should not give up on the Great Commission,” he said. “We should not give up on the Holy Spirit’s ability to do what He wants to do, and I believe we do better together better than we can do separately. I challenge you, I ask you, I beg of you to join with me in a task that indeed is telling the world how they can buy their own presents.
“We have become an arrogant people, and we must understand our un-deservedness, and that without Him we can do nothing.” (BP)
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