GREENSBORO, N.C. (BP)–If thousands of Southern Baptist pastors from across the United States came to the 2006 Pastors’ Conference to get inspiration for “Reaching Today’s World for Jesus Christ” — the theme of this year’s gathering — they got what they came for in the Greensboro Coliseum June 11.
“There is nothing like the Pastors’ Conference to get you on fire and get you going,” outgoing Southern Baptist Convention President Bobby Welch said in his welcoming remarks.
Pastors’ Conference President Bryant Wright of Johnson Ferry Baptist Church in Marietta, Ga., hosted a lineup of preachers and musicians that included Johnny Hunt, pastor of the First Baptist Church in Woodstock, Ga.; Chuck Kelley, president of New Orleans Baptist Theological Seminary; Dick Lincoln, pastor of Shandon Baptist Church in Columbia, S.C.; and Christian recording artist David Phelps.
Hunt cited God’s “master plan for evangelism” in the Acts 17 account of the Apostle Paul being run out of Thessalonica and chased to Berea. He said pastors need to emulate those early Christian missionaries who “turned the world upside down.”
Paul shared the authority and truthfulness of Scripture, Hunt said, noting, “There is one thing Southern Baptists need: We need not to just plan and talk about a plan; we need to ask God to give us hot hearts to see people come to faith in Jesus Christ.”
The best way to build a church, Hunt said, is to win people to faith in Jesus Christ and then ask them to join in winning other people. But he said he is concerned that preachers have gotten too busy and are not actively witnessing to unsaved people.
“Nothing will keep a preacher’s heart on fire like telling people who Jesus is,” Hunt said. “If you are too busy to witness to someone, preacher, that’s not busyness; that’s disobedience. The last time I checked, disobedience is sinfulness.”
New Orleans Seminary President Chuck Kelley noted even though Hurricane Katrina caused “perhaps the greatest disbursement of people in America since the Civil War,” God used the disaster to open up opportunities for sharing the Gospel in New Orleans that Kelley had not seen in 30 years of living there.
“Adversity is the ticket to great acts of God,” Kelley said. If preachers believe the sovereignty of God, he said, they would be courageously obedient to God’s call to preach the Gospel in the face of crisis or devastation.
“When everything around you falls apart, and all the evidence seems contrary to what you believe about God’s sovereignty and control, that is when God is ready to do His deepest work in your heart,” Kelley said.
“Our word of testimony from the campus of New Orleans Baptist Theological Seminary is a very simple word, ‘Do not be afraid,’” Kelley said. “Do not be afraid for your life is in the hands of an all-powerful God who will move heaven and earth to care for you.”
Lincoln started his message with his own testimony. Growing up, rarely going to church, Lincoln said as a college student he was “a pagan more interested in partying than anything else.” But his roommate was a committed believer raised in a Baptist church which was passionate about reaching the world for Jesus Christ.
Through the faithfulness of his roommate, along with an invitation to go to an evangelistic outreach at a church, Lincoln was introduced to Christ and subsequently saved. Now as a pastor, Lincoln said he takes seriously the Apostle Paul’s mission in 1 Corinthians 9:22 to “become all things to all people, so that I may by all means save some.”
“What might God want you to try to reach one person like me — who can’t relate to your church — that might not be reached unless you make a change?” Lincoln asked.
Lincoln recounted how he never liked contemporary worship formats, compared to a more traditional style. But at the urging of some persistent members of his church, Lincoln said he decided six years ago to add a new worship service and allow it to be in a contemporary format. Despite his misgivings, Lincoln said more than 1,100 people showed up to the inaugural service.
“If I knew at 30 years old what I know now, I would have a country western worship service and a contemporary worship service and a traditional worship service,” he said. “Don’t let the culture of the saved determine your efforts to reach the world…. Don’t be against it just because you don’t like it. Someone may come to Christ because you were broadminded.”
In a tribute to Billy Graham, Marshall Shelley, vice president at Christianity Today International and author of numerous books including “The Leadership Secrets of Billy Graham,” shared with the crowd how God used Billy Graham to launch Christianity Today magazine.
A brief, retrospective video noted Graham’s influence in post-war America of the 1950s. The narrator described Graham’s desire to “restore evangelical Christianity’s intellectual respectability and spiritual impact … [and] reaffirm the power of God’s Word to redeem the lost” through the magazine’s ongoing ministry.
The opening session of the Pastors’ Conference concluded with a videotaped message from Rick Warren of Saddleback Church in Lake Forest, Calif. Originally scheduled to appear in person, Warren’s message was titled, “How to Live Like Jesus.” In it, Warren outlined nine “keys to God’s power in your ministry.” He said when God finds preachers who live with integrity, humility, simplicity, possibility, hospitality, civility, charity, generosity and priority of purpose, there is “almost nothing God will not do for this person.”
In a departure from the traditional conference format, pastors chose from a series of breakout sessions Monday morning at the nearby Sheraton Greensboro Hotel at Four Seasons. Noted preachers, ministry experts and theologians led sessions on how to reach today’s world through men’s ministries, women’s ministries, multi-campus churches, breakout churches and other strategies. One much-anticipated breakout session, meanwhile, was a dialogue between Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary President Paige Patterson and Southern Baptist Theological Seminary President Al Mohler titled, “Reaching Today’s World Through Differing Views of Election.”
Monday afternoon’s activities reflected a new twist on the format of the SBC Pastors’ Conference, Wright explained. Whereas the music at the Sunday evening opening session was in a blended style led by Mark Cottingham and the Impact Team from Johnson Ferry Baptist Church, Monday afternoon’s session at the hotel was in a contemporary worship style led by Jonathan Munson and the church’s worship band. Contemporary Christian music artists Shane & Shane were featured. Speakers included Nelson Searcy of The Journey in New York City, Kerry Shook of Fellowship of the Woodlands in Texas and Erwin McManus of Mosaic in Los Angeles.
The Pastors’ Conference will conclude back at the Greensboro Coliseum Monday evening. The music will be in a traditional style led by the Johnson Ferry Choir and Orchestra, and messages from David Jeremiah, Tony Evans and Ed Young Sr., and a tribute to the late Adrian Rogers featuring his wife Joyce.
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With reporting by Norm Miller & Gary Myers.
