Ronnie Floyd, pastor of the largest Southern Baptist church in Arkansas, will be nominated as president of the Southern Baptist Convention next month.
Georgia pastor Johnny Hunt, who until a week ago was the nominee favored by the SBC's conservative leaders, will instead nominate Floyd, whose candidacy was first reported in Associated Baptist Press May 5.
“As most would know, I had been asked to have my name placed for nomination as president,” Hunt, pastor of First Baptist Church of Woodstock, Ga., said in a news release posted May 7 on the website of Floyd's church, First Baptist of Springdale, Ark.
“In fact, at the Jacksonville pastors‚ conference [in February] the announcement was made,” Hunt continued. However, “due to not getting the real peace I needed in my heart to do this,” he said, he called Floyd to say with “an equal conviction that I believed he was the man God had raised up for such a time as this to lead Southern Baptists.”
Hunt said Floyd “called me last Wednesday and informed me that he will humbly accept this nomination due to God speaking to him dramatically through Acts 16:6-10. He never sought it one moment, but was drafted supernaturally to let me nominate him to be our next president.”
The presidency has been the key to gaining and retaining control of the 16 million-member denomination and its agencies. The SBC's inerrantist leaders have controlled the position for almost three decades, usually running unopposed.
Unlike most previous years, however, the leadership's candidate likely will face opposition from one or more other factions in the convention — most notably a loose-knit group of younger conservatives protesting what they call the leadership's narrow and exclusivistic track record. The election is set for the first day of the June 13-14 convention in Greensboro, N.C.
The dark horse in this year's presidential election could be Wade Burleson, the International Mission Board trustee whose complaints about exclusionary IMB policies almost cost him his spot on the board.
Complicating the picture this year, a blue-ribbon SBC panel is calling for the election of officers who come from churches that contribute at least 10 percent of their undesignated receipts to the denomination's central budget — a standard few recent presidents could meet.
First Baptist Church of Springdale reported $221,000 in gifts to the SBC's Cooperative Program budget in 2005, representing 1.85 percent of undesignated receipts of $11,952,137. However, the church reported a total of $489,862 given for all Southern Baptist causes, which would include special missions offerings, and more than $2.6 million given to all world evangelism and mission causes.
During Floyd's nearly 20-year pastorate, the Springdale church has grown from 3,700 members to more than 16,000 and baptized over 11,700 people. Floyd is a former chairman of the SBC Executive Committee and former president of the SBC Pastors' Conference, a common precursor to the denominational presidency.
No other candidates have announced for SBC president this year. But Wade Burleson has become a favorite of the younger conservatives, especially the bloggers who have been tracking the IMB turmoil.
Benjamin Cole, one of those young leaders, said in a statement May 8 that “a contested election for convention president seems inevitable.”
“I believe the discussion that is about to ensue is both healthy and necessary for the sake of reform and renewal in our convention, and I intend to participate vigorously and charitably in that discussion before and after the annual meeting in Greensboro,” Cole said.
Burleson told ABP in March he is not interested in denominational politics. But he has sounded more and more open to a possible nomination in his recent weblog postings.
In a May 2 post that read like a campaign speech, Burleson tried to deflect the attention: “I frankly am too busy for convention work. I don't want it, need it, or seek it. … If I believed a nomination to a position of service in the SBC would be detrimental to providing solutions to [the SBC's exclusivism], I would decline that nomination without hesitation. I will do what I believe is best for the convention — period.”
Burleson, pastor of Emmanuel Baptist Church in Enid, Okla., called for SBC leaders to abandon their cause of “convention conformity” and become more inclusive. “Unless we stop shrinking the parameters of what it means to be a Southern Baptist, we will end up being a narrow, isolated sect within Christendom and lose our ability to reach the world for Christ,” Burleson wrote.
Burleson participated in the meeting of younger conservatives May 2-3 that produced the “Memphis Declaration,” a statement of repentance for the triumphalism, arrogance and isolationism the signers said threatens the SBC's integrity. (See page 2 of this issue.)
Burleson is the only candidate mentioned whose church would meet the 10 percent standard for SBC giving. Emmanuel Baptist Church gave $105,000 to the Cooperative Program in 2005, representing 14 percent of undesignated receipts of $750,000.
Another faction making waves this year is the SBC's Calvinists. Increasingly organized and vocal, they will likely have a candidate to support, at least for first vice president.
Mark Dever, pastor of Capitol Hill Baptist Church in Washington, D.C., is expected to be nominated for SBC office, most likely first vice president. Dever, a prominent spokesman for Calvinist or Reformed theology in the SBC, was traveling out of the country and could not be reached for comment.
The vice presidential offices, which are more honorary than powerful, usually attract little attention before the June convention. This year, however, two confirmed nominees have surfaced for second vice president.
Wiley Drake, pastor of First Southern Baptist Church in Buena Park, Calif., will be nominated by Bill Dodson, a pastor in Kentucky. Drake is a regular fixture at Southern Baptist conventions, leading the charge in the SBC's boycott of Disney and frequently making resolutions on a number of topics.
And J. D. Greear, pastor of the Summit Church in Durham, N.C., will be nominated for second vice president, according to Daniel Akin, president of Southeastern Baptist Theological Seminary in Wake Forest, N.C., who is expected to nominate him.
Greear may have an advantage, since the convention will be in nearby Greensboro, N.C. He was touted as representative of the “young leaders in the SBC.” But Drake participated in the recent meeting in Memphis organized by younger pastors.
Neither church meets the proposed standard for Cooperative Program giving, however.
Drake's church reported $1,000 given through the Cooperative Program last year, just over 1 percent of the church‚s reported receipts of $96,450. Greear's church reports $16,500 in gifts through the Cooperative Program, slightly less than 1 percent of the church's total undesignated receipts of $1.7 million.
Dever's church would not release giving records for the congrega-
tion.
The Southern Baptist Convention has been working to revive sluggish Cooperative Program giving, which funds the denomination's mission boards and other agencies. A February report of the Ad Hoc Cooperative Program Committee calls for the election of future convention officers on both the state and national levels from churches that give at least 10 percent through the Cooperative Program.