Listen to local churches, focus on the Great Commission, and seek the advance of God’s Kingdom.
These were the exhortations of speakers at the May 13 meeting of the Strategic Initiatives Task Force at the Baptist Building in Montgomery.
Chaired by Gary Hollingsworth, pastor of First Baptist Church, Trussville, the task force was elected by messengers to the annual meeting of the Alabama Baptist State Convention in November 2002.
The group is charged with developing conventionwide ministry emphases and focuses for the years 2005-2011.
Joe Godfrey, state convention president, brought the opening devotional and said, “We are to be advancing, never retreating.
“What we’re doing here is for the glory and honor of Jesus Christ. I believe if we keep that focus, then whatever we do is going to be the right thing,” said Godfrey, pastor of First Baptist Church, Pleasant Grove.
Rick Lance, executive director of Alabama Baptist State Board of Missions (SBOM), said the SBOM staff will be refocused organizationally to reflect the task force’s priority recommendations, which are scheduled to be delivered at the November 2004 state convention meeting.
Lance thanked the group for considering how Baptists can focus on the Great Commission.
He said, “The key for Alabama Baptists and any Southern Baptist entity or group is to look at the world through the lens of the Great Commission.”
Charles Kelley, president of New Orleans Baptist Theological Seminary, brought the meeting’s keynote address.
He urged the task force to listen earnestly to local churches. “The Southern Baptist Convention ought not to work,” Kelley observed. “The Southern Baptist Convention has no leader; there is no person who is the CEO or head of the Southern Baptist Convention.”
Direction from churches
“We do have a president that changes at least every two years, but there is no person whose job it is to cast the vision for the Southern Baptist Convention.”
Given these factors, Kelley asked the group to consider how the SBC has become the largest Protestant denomination in the United States.
“The voice and vision does not come from a [single] person in Southern Baptist life,” Kelley said. “It comes from our churches. We live or die based on how carefully we listen to the voice of our churches.”
Kelley also noted that the rate of baptisms among Southern Baptists is not what it used to be. In 1945, Kelley said, the SBC baptized approximately 220,000 — nearly doubling that figure to 418,000 by 1955.
But since 1955, “we have never hit the mark of 450,000 baptisms,” Kelley pointed out. “We have not been able to increase even 35,000 in 40 years.”
Kelley said it’s puzzling to him that the SBC has more churches, ministers, missionaries, resources and buildings than ever before.
“We have more of everything but fruit,” Kelley said. “What happened to the harvest?”
Using the metaphor of a farm, Kelley described some of the dynamics of Southern Baptist life and history.
“You’ve got to have land to have a farm, and you have to have room … for the kind of crop you want to grow,” he said. “You have to have room for the people who are not there.” In addition, “the more seeds you plant, the bigger the harvest you will have.”
Furthermore, as the climate is important to a farm, so it is for a local church, Kelley said. “Not every farm can grow every kind of crop,” he stated.
Other critical factors in reaching people for Christ included:
ZDecisional preaching. “Basically, the Southern Baptist approach to worship on Sunday morning is an institutionalized revival meeting, … preaching a message from the Word of God and highlighting a need for a response to Christ.”
ZCultivation. “The process of cultivating is absolutely critical,” and Sunday School should be a key part of the strategy, Kelley said. “The more of the Bible people get in their minds, the more the Holy Spirit has to work with.”
ZThe arena for cultivation. “What matters most is not the methods you use to do church. … To the extent that you’re working the window box and not the field, you have less of a potential of making an impact on your field.”
Kelley described the present state of the SBC: “Southern Baptists are a harvest-oriented denomination living in the midst of an unseeded generation.”
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