Ronnie Floyd, pastor of the largest Southern Baptist church in Arkansas, will be nominated as president of the Southern Baptist Convention (SBC) at the annual meeting in June.
Georgia pastor Johnny Hunt, who was the original nominee favored by the SBC leaders, will instead nominate Floyd, pastor of First Baptist Church, Springdale, Ark.
“As most would know, I had been asked to have my name placed for nomination as president,” Hunt, pastor of First Baptist Church, Woodstock, Ga., said in a news release posted May 7 on the Web site of Floyd’s church.
“In fact, at the Jacksonville (Fla.) pastors’ conference [in February] the announcement was made,” Hunt continued.
However, “due to not getting the real peace I needed in my heart to do this,” he said, he called Floyd to say with “an equal conviction that I believed he was the man God had raised up for such a time as this to lead Southern Baptists.”
During Floyd’s 20-year pastorate, the Springdale church has grown from 3,700 members to more than 16,000 and baptized more than 11,700.
Floyd likely will face opposition from one or more other factions in the convention — most notably a loose-knit group of younger conservatives protesting what they call the leadership’s narrow and exclusivistic track record.
The election is set for the first day of the June 13–14 annual meeting in Greensboro, N.C.
(ABP)
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