If you were an Alabamian present at this year’s Southern Baptist Convention (SBC) Pastors Conference, held June 21–22 in Louisville, Ky., then chances were you knew one of the program personalities personally — if not several of them.
Alabama Baptists appeared throughout the event, providing leadership from the top as well as preaching, providing music and praying. Even the new fiancée of Ed Litton, this year’s Pastors Conference president, was introduced.
Introducing “a wonderful, godly woman,” Kathy Ferguson, as his fiancee following the closing prayer, Litton, senior pastor of First Baptist Church, North Mobile, in Saraland, garnered cheers and applause.
His wife, Tammy, was killed in an automobile accident in August 2007. Ferguson’s husband, Rick, who was pastor of Riverside Baptist Church, Denver, was killed in an automobile accident in July 2002.
“Many of you have prayed for the Ferguson family just as you prayed for the Litton family,” Litton said. “God brought us into each other’s lives.
“This August, we are going to make vows to God and one another to be husband and wife, and I just wanted to tell somebody.”
He also noted a “touch from God” during the conference.
“Thank you, men of God who have been faithful to bring the Word of God to our hearts. … We needed a touch from God, and it’s not going to stop tonight.”
Litton told The Alabama Baptist that the conference “surpassed his expectations.”
The Shofar vocal group from the University of Mobile led worship during the Monday morning session, and Clint Pressley, senior pastor of Dauphin Way Baptist Church, Mobile, and his wife, Connie, prayed at the podium for the pastors and their spouses to be “unified in one mission.”
And during the Monday evening session, David Platt, pastor of The Church at Brook Hills, Birmingham, reminded Southern Baptists that they face a choice: “Are we going to die in our religion, or are we going to die in our devotion?”
Applause frequently interrupted Platt’s impassioned address based on Hebrews 13.
The writer of Hebrews addressed Jewish Christians when it wasn’t easy to be a Jewish Christian, he said. “Apparently many in his audience were tempted to shrink back from their faith and to fall away from their mission. … Somehow, along the way, how they worshiped had become more important than who they worshiped — style without substance.”
They also were paralyzed by fear, Platt said. “Many were trying to figure out how to stay in the camp of Judaism and still follow Christ, and the author of Hebrews said it can’t be done. … You can retreat from the mission you have been given, or you can risk everything for the mission.”
The writer of Hebrews reminded his readers that after the Jews fled Egypt, they failed to trust God and Moses prayed that He would forgive them. “God said He had forgiven them,” Platt said. “But He also said nevertheless … no one who treated me with contempt will see the land I promised to their forefathers. Your people will suffer in this desert for 40 years.”
Platt said Southern Baptists, in the face of massive physical and spiritual needs around the world, have retreated into their nice buildings, sitting in their comfortable chairs insulated from the inner city and the spiritual lostness of the world while designing programs for themselves.
“If we retreat from the mission, God will forgive us; our salvation is not at stake here,” he said. “But, brothers and sisters, He may just leave us to wander in the wilderness until we die. He has done it with thousands of churches in the United States, and we are fools to think He could not do it with any one of us.”
Platt noted the tendency to craft Jesus “in our own image — a nice middle-class American Jesus. And if we do this, then we need to realize that when we gather to worship, we are no longer worshiping Jesus — we are worshiping ourselves.”
Headlining the Monday evening session was SBC President Johnny Hunt.
During his sermon, Hunt said he is saddened by the decline in baptisms among Southern Baptists but added, “If church members don’t have a passion for winning souls, it’s because their pastor doesn’t have a passion for it. And if our denomination doesn’t have a passion for it, it’s because our pastors don’t have a passion for it.
“Whatever is important to the leaders is important to the people. We (pastors) become a voice to the people.”
Hunt said Christians often say tragic events — like the 9/11 terrorist attacks or the economic depression — are attempts by God to attract America’s attention.
“But I’ve turned a little,” he said. “I realized God isn’t trying to get America’s attention. He’s trying to get our attention, the Church’s attention. … When we begin to conduct ourselves in such a way that we do everything with tenderness and holiness and compassion and full of the love of God, then God will get the nation’s attention. But He’s going to get our attention first.”
Hunt said he is not a prophet. “But I may have to do until a prophet comes. And here is what I want to say to the Southern Baptist Convention: There is a dire need for overwhelming repentance.”
During the Monday afternoon session, former Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee stole the show.
With a bass guitar in one hand and a Bible in the other, Huckabee, host of FOX News Channel’s “Huckabee,” challenged the pastors to refocus on biblical roles of leadership, both in the family and the church.
Other speakers included Fred Luter Jr., senior pastor of Franklin Avenue Baptist Church, New Orleans; Michael Catt, senior pastor of Sherwood Baptist Church, Albany, Ga.; Tom Elliff, former SBC president; Mike Landry, senior pastor of Sarasota Baptist Church in Florida; Francis Chan, teaching pastor of Cornerstone Church, Simi Valley, Calif.; J.D. Greear, lead pastor of Summit Church, Durham, N.C.; Mac Brunson, senior pastor of First Baptist Church, Jacksonville, Fla.; Chuck Colson, founder of Prison Fellowship; Alvin Reid, professor of evangelism at Southeastern Baptist Theological Seminary in Wake Forest, N.C.; Ed Stetzer, president of LifeWay Research; and comedian Dennis Swanberg.
Officers also were elected for the 2010 Pastors Conference: President Kevin Ezell, senior pastor of Highview Baptist Church, Louisville, Ky.; Vice President Jimmy Scroggins, senior pastor of First Baptist Church, West Palm Beach, Fla.; and Secretary/treasurer Ben Mandrell, pastor of Englewood Baptist Church, Jackson, Tenn. (Editor’s Network contributed)
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