9343.jpg)
- Pastors reminded to honor calling at annual conference
- Conference breakout sessions focus on pastors family, Christian life, leadership & transition
- Love: What the world needs now
- Florida Baptists celebrate evangelism, church planting & church strengthening priorities
- Hughes urges pastors: Go for the ‘big ask’ of members, themselves
- State Board of Missions hears report from past presidents on GCR
- FBSC messengers applaud pastors who have served 60-plus years
- Messengers in Pensacola approve nominees for Florida’s SBOM & agencies
- Florida Focus
- Obituaries
- Latest Stories...
RSS News Feed
 |
| BP Photo |
NASHVILLE, Tenn. (BP)--James T. Draper Jr. called for a revolution. Jeff Harris called for it to be plotted on a napkin.
 |
| Click on image for related coverage |
Draper, president of LifeWay Christian Resources, opened June 19’s Younger Leaders Summit – the climax of a year-long effort to engage younger Southern Baptist leaders more directly in denominational activities – with the comment that the conservative resurgence was good and necessary, but it was in the past.
Younger leaders, Draper said, are mostly conservative and do not want to keep fighting a battle that many of them were hardly old enough to remember. The Southern Baptist Convention needs to focus on reaching a lost world, he emphasized, and doing so will require change.
“I do not see this as the end but the beginning,” he told about 400 participants at the Global Café in downtown Nashville. “I hope this thing is just getting started and that it grows from here. It is time for a revolution.”
Harris proposed what may very well become known as the “Napkin Test,” at the two-hour rally.
“If you can’t tell somebody what you stand for in the space of a napkin, then you don’t clearly understand the message you are trying to communicate,” said Harris, pastor of Grace Point Church in San Antonio, Texas, and a featured speaker at the summit.
“The SBC needs to be able to write on a napkin what its message is,” he said. “Unfortunately we are more known for what we are against than what we are for. I don’t want to have to apologize or think twice before telling someone I’m a Southern Baptist. I don’t want to worry about how they’ll respond or take something I say.”
Draper introduced the need to involve younger leaders in the denomination at last year’s SBC annual meeting in Indianapolis. He followed his convention address with a series of columns challenging Southern Baptist leaders to “make a place at the table” for younger leaders.
Ed Stetzer, director of research at the North American Mission Board, addressing the lingering effect of the “Battle for the Bible” 25 years ago, said, “We’ve had a conservative resurgence but what we need now is a missional resurgence. This is not an age issue but it is a missional issue.... We’ve got our theology in order; now let’s get our mission together.”
SBC President Bobby Welch made an unplanned appearance at the meeting and concurred that a revolution was needed within the convention.
“We’ve got to change,” he said. “I don’t really know how to get there from where we are, but I know we need to get there. I do know we’ve got to start now.”
Welch said both young and old are interested in being involved.
“There are two roads to the same dream,” he said. “... Here’s what I’m saying: Older guys, don’t lie down and quit on us, not now. Younger guys, don’t turn and run away from us, not now. Together there is nothing like [the SBC], but we must have a unity of purpose for reaching a lost world.”
The session’s initial speaker, Robby Partain, director of missions and evangelism for the Southern Baptists of Texas Convention, set the tone for the meeting by focusing on the word, “It.”
 |
| BP Photo |
“‘It’ is not about doctrine,” he said. “Doctrine is not the motivation for involving young leaders in the denomination. ‘It’ is not about wooing young leaders with a position or place in the denomination. Serving on boards and committees is not a motivation. ‘It’ is about the mission. That’s what motivates young leaders and motivates them to network for the purpose of the mission. Younger leaders are going to partner in one way or another. The question is, ‘Will the SBC be a network younger leaders want to be a part of?’”
Robert E. (Bob) Reccord, president of NAMB, said he was challenged to think of what the content of his last message would be if he knew he’d die afterwards. “The mission,” he said. “I’m begging you to answer [Jesus’] call. Tell His story and not yours. He is at the center of the story. Then go and change the world.”
Reccord said there would be “radical change” at NAMB to better include younger leaders.
Chris Seay, pastor of Ecclesia, a Houston congregation, said Southern Baptists are becoming known for being dogmatic. “Doctrine is important,” he said, “but being faithful to God is more important.”
Harris called for a unity of purpose that unites all generations within the denomination for the sake of the Gospel. “Younger leaders, we will never have a voice in the denomination without serving it. We must catch the vision and decide what we are going to do with it.”
And that, Harris said, is where the napkin comes in.
“We need to be able to write on a napkin what we are about as Southern Baptists, then pursue it,” Harris said. “That’s what really matters.”