If one ever doubted the influence of the president of the Southern Baptist Convention (SBC) on the affairs of the national body, one has only to look at the impact of Bobby Welch to see the power of this office.
From the moment Welch was elected SBC president in 2004 to the closing gavel of the 2005 annual meeting, this Alabama native seized the agenda for Southern Baptists. Going into his second term as president, he shows no sign of letting up. Welch’s passion is evangelism and he is using every available tool to make evangelism the passion of all Southern Baptists.
The theme of this year’s convention — Everyone Can — reflected that commitment and emphasized that every Southern Baptist can be used of God to witness and win someone to faith in Jesus Christ during the coming church year.
Welch’s personal goal of seeing 1 million people baptized into membership by a Southern Baptist-related church during the 2005–2006 church year has become the most recognized goal of the national convention.
This did not happen because of detailed planning or careful study. It happened because of the powerful personality of the SBC president.
Welch announced this goal at his first SBC presidential news conference and proceeded to promote the goal on a much-publicized nationwide bus tour.
In all 50 states, Welch preached the single focus of evangelism that results in baptizing 1 million people.
Welch even relocated to Nashville, site of the 2005 annual meeting, for about two months to promote preconvention evangelistic activities called CrossOver.
With the support of the church he serves as pastor, First Baptist Church, Daytona Beach, Fla., Welch became the nearest thing to a full-time president Southern Baptists have ever had. The unplanned costs for all of this were underwritten from several sources including his church and special appropriations from some SBC entities.
Everyone Can was the only possible theme for the annual meeting, and that theme was carried out in several ways. The most publicized was the eight baptisms that took place during convention sessions. Five Nashville-area churches agreed to perform the baptisms. Welch said one reason he asked for this feature was to make sure that messengers from churches that did not have a baptism last year got to at least see a baptism.
There were Everyone Can challenges and videos. These ranged from three-minute video testimonies about evangelism to 25-minute testimonies and sermons about the importance of personal evangelism.
Each convention session was to have a major emphasis on Everyone Can, but when Welch’s President’s Address, scheduled for Tuesday morning, had to be moved to the afternoon session to allow U.S. President George W. Bush to address the messengers, that plan went slightly awry.
The importance of Everyone Can at this convention can also be seen by the fact that the evangelism emphasis received more program time than the International Mission Board and the North American Mission Board combined.
Everyone Can is off to a good start. Preconvention activities garnered more participation than at any other time and resulted in more than 2,700 reported first-time professions of faith.
There is widespread anticipation that baptisms will be up for the 2004–2005 church year and will set a record in the 2005–2006 church year (Oct. 1, 2005–Sept. 30, 2006).
But it would be wrong to think that evangelism is a new emphasis for Southern Baptists. It is not. Evangelism is at the heart of who we are as a people of God.
Welch called evangelism, “the lowest common denominator among Southern Baptists.” By that, he meant that all Southern Baptists believe in the need to share the good news of forgiveness of our sin through faith in Jesus Christ.
When national and state leaders signed the Empowering Kingdom Growth Covenant in 2002, one said, “There’s a yearning across the SBC in our churches and associations to focus on what we do best, and that has been shown through Southern Baptists’ love for evangelism and missions.”
The recent call for “Acts 1:8 churches” is nothing more than a strategy to help churches make sure they are involved in sharing the gospel at home and around the world.
Everyone Can is an emphasis on the individual responsibility to share Jesus Christ. It is my responsibility and yours and that of every other Christian.
As emphasized here in Alabama, evangelism requires an intentional decision by each person to share the gospel in the power of the Holy Spirit and leave the results to God.
Following his re-election as SBC president, Welch promised to be as active in the coming year as he has been in the past. He undoubtedly will be but it is difficult to see how Welch could make any greater impact on Southern Baptists than he already has in his first year of service.
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