The telephone caller wanted to know what the race for president of the Southern Baptist Convention (SBC) was like in Alabama. He said in his state the tensions over the election to succeed Steve Gaines as SBC president were the highest they had been since the height of the Conservative Resurgence.
I assured the caller that Alabama Baptists were interested in who the next SBC president would be, but here in the Heart of Dixie swords had not been drawn nor battle joined over the upcoming election. More Alabama Baptists are likely to attend the upcoming annual meeting June 12–13 in Dallas than in recent years, in part because of the election of a new president.
J.D. Greear, age 45, pastor of The Summit Church in Raleigh-Durham, North Carolina, and Ken Hemphill, age 70, director of the Center for Church Planting and Revitalization at North Greenville (Baptist) University in Tigerville, South Carolina, are the two men vying for the position. Both have strong support among Alabama Baptists. Both also are respected as national leaders among Southern Baptists.
Although they are a generation apart, both helped grow a megachurch. Greear became pastor of Homestead Heights Baptist Church in 2002. He relaunched the church as The Summit Church and the growth has been phenomenal.
Church membership stood at 7,858 for the last year of record with attendance at the various campuses totaling 9,782 according to a church report.
Church planting
While growing the church, Greear led the congregation to adopt a goal of planting 1,000 churches by 2050. Fifteen years into that campaign the church reports starting 248 churches — 40 in the United States and 208 internationally.
About 20 years before Greear launched The Summit Church, Hemphill became pastor of First Baptist Church, Norfolk, Virginia, where he transformed that historic congregation. During his 12 years as pastor the church grew from 800 members to more than 6,500. Hemphill initiated a Saturday night worship service and Sunday School, which was followed on Sunday by three additional worship services and four Sunday Schools.
Hemphill’s reputation in church growth and church revitalization resulted in an invitation to lead a denomination-wide revitalization effort through the Home Mission Board (now the North American Mission Board).
Hemphill’s stature among Southern Baptists was attested to in 1994 when the trustees of Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary in Fort Worth, Texas, elected him president of what was then the largest SBC seminary. He served as president of the seminary for nine years.
Both Greear and Hemphill hold doctor of philosophy degrees. Greear earned his Ph.D. from Southeastern Baptist Theological Seminary in Wake Forest, North Carolina, where he also earned a master of divinity degree. Hemphill earned a master of divinity degree and doctor of ministry at Southern Baptist Theological Seminary in Louisville, Kentucky, and earned his Ph.D. at Cambridge University in England.
Obviously both men are outstanding Southern Baptist leaders. Despite their similarities, two issues are being discussed as differences. One relates to giving. The other to theology.
Some raise concerns about Cooperative Program (CP) giving by The Summit Church. In 2017 the church contributed $484,440 to state, national and international causes through CP. That amount came from undesignated receipts of $20.1 million — a percentage of 2.4 percent. Prior to 2015 records show the church gave only to SBC Cooperative Program causes and that year contributed $69,940 out of undesignated income of $14,629,207.
Others point to the church’s Great Commission Giving, an SBC-approved designation of total missions giving by a church, and argue the church spends about 19 percent of its total budget on missions including what it spends on its own missions efforts through church plants around the world.
In Hemphill’s final year as pastor in 1993, his church gave $241,919 through CP out of undesignated receipts of $2,522,845, reports indicate. That is 9.6 percent. Today, Hemphill is a member of First Baptist Church, Hendersonville, North Carolina, which reports giving more than 10 percent of undesignated receipts to missions causes through CP giving.
The theological issue surfaced in Hemphill’s announcement for SBC president. He and some of those who urged him to seek the office reference the 2012 Statement of the Traditional Southern Baptist Understanding of God’s Plan of Salvation.
That is a statement designed to emphasize that salvation is available to all people and not just to a select few who are capable of responding to the gospel while the rest are predestined to an eternity in hell. The statement offers a series of affirmations and denials about the theology related to salvation.
The statement’s principle author was Eric Hankins, now pastor of First Baptist Church, Fairhope, and was signed by many prominent SBC leaders, state executive directors and other leaders including Alabamians Fred Wolfe, Junior Hill and Bobby Welch.
Ostensibly the statement was to counter the growing influence of “New Calvinism” among Southern Baptists.
Hemphill identifies as a supporter of the statement. Greear is not identified with the statement.
Critics of the statement contend it creates theological strawmen. They say ideas like limited atonement (Jesus died for the elect but not for all), irresistible grace (those predestined to salvation cannot resist God’s salvation) or double predestination (some predestined for heaven and some predestined for hell) are not real issues among Southern Baptists.
Evangelism and missions
Greear’s supporters point to his 631 baptisms in 2017 and the number of church plants as proof of his commitment to evangelism and missions.
When Southern Baptists argue theology the arguments can be passionate, as attested to by the telephone call mentioned earlier. So can conversations about commitment to work together through the Cooperative Program.
It will be interesting to see how passionate this election becomes in its final days and what decision messengers make about who will be the next SBC president.
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