Executive Committee members, Southern Baptist Convention (SBC) entity heads and other guests gathered in Nashville on Feb. 21 to inaugurate Frank Page as the SBC Executive Committee’s sixth president.
Page officially assumed the position Oct. 1 after serving 30 years as a pastor and in various denominational roles, including SBC president. Guests were led in worship in the Van Ness Auditorium at LifeWay Christian Resources by Travis Cottrell, and several of Page’s colleagues spoke and prayed for him.
Rick Lance, executive director of the Alabama Baptist State Board of Missions, delivered a charge on behalf of Page’s colleagues at the 42 Baptist state conventions. He challenged Page to remember that being a follower of Christ is a prerequisite to being a Christian leader.
“You will never catch up to Christ, but you must keep following Him,” Lance said. “Continue to be faithful to your calling.
“Be a friend to your colleagues. You can’t do this job by yourself,” he said.
“I appreciate your turning CEO into ‘Chief Encouragement Officer,’” Lance continued. “We are going to be your friends, not your foes. We are going to be your colleagues, not your competition. We are going to be your allies, not your adversaries.”
Page delivered a statement of his vision for the office, saying he wants to have priorities that would please the Lord.
“I really will be quite happy when tonight is over because I’m not real comfortable with this kind of attention, to be quite honest with you,” Page said.
“I would be quite happy if you would forget me and remember our Lord.
“But God has called me to this position, and I am honored to be a part of this. So I speak to you tonight about a simple, biblical vision that I think the Lord brought to my heart,” Page said, pointing to Genesis 12, the passage where God promises to make Abraham into a great nation and bless him so that he can be a blessing to others.
“I think that God’s call upon Abraham’s life is precious, but is it not true of all of us, that God called us to be saved and God called us to serve Him in some capacity, shape, form or fashion?” he asked.
Page added he believes God is calling Southern Baptists to be a blessing to the nations: “I believe God’s call for Southern Baptists is that we would never rest until every man, woman, boy and girl on this continent hears the good news of Jesus, so that they can say, ‘That person was a blessing to me.’
“I don’t believe God is going to be happy until every man, woman, boy and girl on the face of this earth hears the good news of Jesus Christ,” he said. “I want us to be able to say as Southern Baptists, ‘We were a blessing.’”
In addition to blessing Abraham, God made demands of him, Page noted.
“I believe God demands a commitment from us. We are to serve Him with passion,” he said. “We are to give Him first-rate loyalty for a first-rate cause.
“I believe God’s calling for Southern Baptists is to be closer than we’ve ever been before, to be purer than we’ve ever been before, to be more passionate than we ever have been before about sharing the good news with a lost and dying world,” Page said.
Just as God’s demands upon Abraham’s life were life-long, Page believes God is not finished with Southern Baptists.
“I know these men who are getting ready to speak are going to say some profound things to us, things we need to hear. But I just want you to remember with me tonight, God’s vision for us is that He will bless us, but He wants us to be a blessing as well,” Page said. (BP)
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