Atlanta-area megachurch pastor Johnny Hunt topped a six-candidate field to win the Southern Baptist Convention (SBC) presidency.
Hunt, pastor of First Baptist Church, Woodstock, Ga., received 3,100 votes, or 52.94 percent of the total, taking the SBC’s top post on the first ballot.
The presidential election featured the convention’s most crowded ballot in almost 30 years.
Other candidates and their vote totals and percentages were:
Frank Cox, senior pastor of North Metro First Baptist Church, Lawrenceville, Ga., 1,286 votes; 21.96 percent.
Avery Willis, a retired vice president of the SBC International Mission Board, 962 votes; 16.43 percent.
Bill Wagner, a former missionary and president of Olivet University International in San Francisco, 255 votes; 4.35 percent.
Les Puryear, pastor of Lewisville Baptist Church, Lewisville, N.C., 188 votes; 3.21 percent.
Wiley Drake, pastor of First Southern Baptist Church, Buena Park, Calif., and a former SBC second vice president, 45 votes; 0.77 percent.
Twenty votes were invalid, which accounted for 0.34 percent.
Hunt “is a man with a heart for the nations,” stressed Ted Traylor, pastor of Olive Baptist Church, Pensacola, Fla., who nominated him.
Last year, First, Woodstock, Ga., “invested $3.3 million for SBC missions” in gifts to the convention’s Cooperative Program budget and contributions to the two missions boards and the Georgia Baptist Convention, Traylor said.
Under Hunt’s leadership, the church has started 28 congregations and 165 members have been called into full-time missions service, he added.
Hunt also has “a heart for the next generation,” Traylor said, noting about 7,000 young ministers have gathered for Hunt’s Timothy-Barnabas mentoring conferences.
Young pastors say of Hunt, “This is our hero,” Traylor said, claiming Hunt’s election would “send an instant message to that young generation that they have a place at the SBC table.”
Kentucky pastor Bill Henard won the SBC’s first vice presidency in a landslide. He defeated two challengers, receiving 1,748 votes — or 73.23 percent of 2,387 ballots.
Henard is senior pastor of Porter Memorial Baptist Church, Lexington, Ky.; president of the Kentucky Baptist Convention; and chairman of the board of the SBC’s LifeWay Christian Resources.
He defeated John Connell, pastor of Calvary Baptist Church, Savannah, Ga. — who received 377 votes (15.79 percent) — and Crist Camden, retired pastor of Oconee Heights Baptist Church, Athens, Ga. — who got 224 votes (9.38 percent).
Vote for the second vice president
The initial vote for the SBC’s second vice president resulted in a tie. John Newland, senior pastor of Fall Creek Baptist Church, Indianapolis, and Doug Mulkey, senior pastor of Mount Zion Baptist Church, Canton, Ga., both received 769 votes, or 30.24 percent each.
A dead tie is unprecedented in SBC history, convention President Frank Page said.
The first ballot for second vice president eliminated two other nominees.
Brian Fossett, an evangelist from Dalton, Ga., got 582 votes (28.89 percent), and Jim Hamilton, executive director of the Dakota Baptist Convention, garnered 381 votes (14.98 percent).
In the runoff, Newland received 470 votes (58.24 percent), defeating Mulkey, who garnered 332 votes (41.3 percent).
The SBC’s two secretaries won re-election without opposition.
They are Recording Secretary John Yeats, communication director for the Louisiana Baptist Convention and member of Ridge Avenue Baptist Church in West Monroe, La., and Registration Secretary Jim Wells, director of missions for Tri-County Baptist Association in southwest Missouri and a member of Hopedale Baptist Church in Ozark, Mo.
During a press conference following his election, Hunt said “radical change” is needed to stop the decline in membership of the 16 million-member denomination.
“We’ve been declining as a denomination, and you can’t turn something around until you stop the tide and direction it is going,” he said, noting he hopes to have the opportunity to speak throughout the denomination and share “what has made our denomination great.”
He said he also wanted to “inspire the younger generation of pastors” to “buy in” to that vision and to “step up to the plate to support it.”
In response to a question as to how he can unite the convention, Hunt said he wants to hold high “the flags of what really represent Southern Baptists.”
Those flags include “being a people of the Book,” missions and church planting.
“I hope to wrap our hearts around those things that I believe that Christ was the most committed to,” Hunt said.
But Southern Baptists must be realistic, Hunt continued, noting that last year the convention baptized fewer people with a membership of 16 million than the convention did in 1950 with six million members. “What’s wrong with this picture? We have a larger army (today). We ought to be taking more territory.”
When asked why the convention is showing a decline, Hunt said pastors must step to the plate and take responsibility. “We can’t blame God. We can’t blame our denominational leaders.”
“What we (pastors) find important, our people find important,” he observed.
Hunt also stressed the need to reach out to the younger generation. “They are not our problem. They are our future,” he said.
Noting he has been connecting with younger pastors over the past 15 years through his Timothy–Barnabas ministry, Hunt said: “I connect with the younger generation. I think we will see a number of them come back to the convention.
“I am going to make myself available (to the younger generation) and I am going to hear their hearts,” he pledged.
“I hope to be a conciliator for the common cause of making His name famous,” Hunt added.
Part of what is needed to reach the younger generation is to stop talking about giving through the Cooperative Program, but instead showing them what is accomplished because Southern Baptists give through cooperative giving, he said.
“We try to get the offering before we get the story,” Hunt said. “We need to show what is happening overseas, who is being helped and show who is being cared for.”
For the younger generation, “it oftentimes comes across that we only want them to be involved to keep us alive.”
Hunt said he hopes to show there is room “under the Southern Baptist umbrella” to those with the passion to take the gospel “down the street and around the world.”
“Maybe God’s gotten Southern Baptists’ attention that we’d better join hands and do what (God’s called us) to do in the time we have.” (TAB, Editor’s Network)
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