It was Alabama Baptist State Convention President Roger Willmore who observed that he “went to a convention and church broke out.” That quip aptly describes what transpired during the 186th annual meeting of Alabama Baptists and the preceding Alabama Baptist Pastors Conference.
For this writer, the three days were a time of spiritual renewal with moments of pure worship, spiritual encouragement and celebration of what God is doing among His people. It has been many years since an annual convention of a state or national Baptist body has been marked by such characteristics.
Willmore contributed to “church breaking out” with his president’s address. The pastor of Deerfoot Baptist Church, Trussville, focused attention on the promise of God, the power of God and the purpose of God. After emphasizing the importance of the power of God in the lives of God’s people, Willmore closed the session by having everyone sing “Breathe on Me.”
The song became a corporate prayer as well as a personal plea. It was a special moment.
But God was not through. Tuesday evening, Kevin Derryberry presented a concert of contemporary Christian music. As he shared about his own spiritual journey and about his ministry in jails and prisons, the mood of the meeting began to change.
When Derryberry moved to songs more familiar to most in the audience, the mood changed even more. By the time he and the praise team from Westwood Baptist Church, Alabaster, began singing “Amazing Grace,” it was “church time” again. The tune was not the traditional one and there were other words repeated between the familiar stanzas, but those in the room were in the presence of God and everyone knew it.
The auditorium of First Baptist Church, Montgomery, was filled beyond capacity. More than 150 chairs had been placed in the aisles. The choir loft was filled with the Alabama Baptist Singing Men and Alabama Baptist Singing Women. Latecomers sat on steps in the balcony, leaned against the walls and huddled around television monitors in the hallways.
The attendance for that evening session was beyond anything witnessed at a state Baptist convention in Alabama for at least a decade.
Rick Burgess of the syndicated radio program “The Rick & Bubba Show” was the featured speaker. His representatives stipulated that he had to be through by 8:15 p.m. Program planners made sure he was up on time.
But Burgess ignored the contract specifications and for more than an hour, walked back and forth across the platform and in between the microphones used by the singers as he challenged people to live like Christians and to be different from those without Christ.
When Burgess issued an invitation, “church” was in full swing. Several people made their way to the altar to confess sin, to be restored, to mend relationships.
And no one headed for the exits the whole time. All were in the presence of God and we knew it.
The day before at the pastors conference, participants had also been in the presence of God. The messages were not evangelistic. Nor did they whip the preachers for failures. Instead speaker after speaker focused on the meeting’s theme, “The Preaching of the Cross.”
How can one not worship God when reminded of what God did for us through the death of His Son, Jesus, on Calvary’s cross? The messages were inspirational, encouraging, enlightening. It was a great pastors conference filled with times when we were all “in church.”
There were other important times. During the Tuesday evening session, all those present who had been on a missions trip during the past year were asked to stand. Nearly half those present stood. When all who had ever been on a missions trip were asked to stand, only a few were left seated. It was encouraging to see how many people invest personally in taking the gospel to others and taking the gospel outside the church walls.
And there were several “sweet moments” as Willmore described them. There was a former resident of the Alabama Baptist Children’s Homes & Family Ministries, Dana Watson, who now works as a supervising social worker for the program. He stood beside the pulpit holding a large ring. As he described how he had been helped, others representing those ministries — the Children’s Homes, The Baptist Foundation of Alabama, Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary and several others — hooked lines on to the ring.
The result was a moving picture of how Baptists work together and, in this case, work together to help hurting and needy children. What is generally referred to as a “report” was another “church” experience, and messengers responded with a standing ovation.
Registered messengers numbered 959, up almost 19 percent over last year but still only the second time the number of registered messengers has dipped below 1,000 since 1946. The number of messengers was surprising considering the Tuesday evening attendance of well more than 2,000 people.
Those looking for something to complain about may point to the lack of parking on Tuesday. It was hard to find adequate parking for several hundred extra cars in a downtown area on a workday. That meant a number of messengers had to walk five or six blocks, but some of those messengers have parked farther away than that when they go to an Alabama or Auburn football game and, probably, without complaint.
Of course, messengers took care of convention business. They adopted a record Cooperative Program budget of $46 million. They elected Jimmy Jackson, 30-year pastor of Whitesburg Baptist Church, Huntsville, as the new convention president. New trustees were approved to oversee convention entities. Reports were accepted. But this annual meeting will not be remembered for its business. It will be remembered because messengers “went to a convention and church broke out.”
Obviously that cannot be planned or programmed. It is an act of God’s Holy Spirit. Still it must be acknowledged that a lot of work has been done by a lot of people to help Alabama Baptists be of one mind and one spirit. Because of such efforts, God was able to pour out His Spirit on the messengers to the 186th annual meeting. Praise be to God.
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