Johnny Hunt's election as president of the Southern Baptist Convention came as no real surprise. Going in, most people assumed that he had a better chance than most of the other five candidates to emerge as the eventual winner. What surprised everyone, however, was that he was elected on the first ballot. SBC bylaws stipulate that unless a candidate receives a majority of votes, a runoff election is held.
In an interview with the Religious Herald, Hunt was asked why he believed so many had voted for him. He said, “I would like to think it is this: we need change. Radical change. We can't just drift along just being good ol' boys …. I think this is like a wake up call—‘Would somebody please stand up and tell us what we need to do next and how we can do it?'
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Hunt
“I like to say,” Hunt went on, “we are the only denomination in the history of Christendom to turn from a liberal leaning back to conservative. The question is now can we be the only mainline denomination that is on a major slide, decline, stop that and turn it around. Because it can happen in a church. So you begin to think, ‘Can you implement that challenge within the whole base of the denomination?' I hope so.”
He continued the thought: “[The] real problem in our denomination right now is not how far down we are in CP [Cooperative Program] giving. It's how far we are down in baptisms. If your car isn't doing well, you need to find a specialist in the area. I don't know that I'm a specialist, but I have been privileged to see 10,000 people baptized at Woodstock in these last 21 years.
“We need to turn it around there. And I believe that new disciples bring with them their whole life, their stewardship. The best way to deal with giving is through disciples, not through a program. I don't think that the CP wants to say that, but I really believe that sometimes it comes more across that we are supporting a program. What I want to do is to help us, if I can, to do a better job to share the vision that programs support. Vision draws support, not programs.”
Not coincidentally, Virginia Baptists have opted to use the term Cooperative Ministries for the very reasons Hunt mentioned. Monies sent from Virginia Baptist churches to the Baptist General Association of Virginia support ministries rather than programs.
But that isn't the only change Hunt believes should be made. Too much has been made, he says, of giving through the CP. He freely admits that Woodstock has been criticized as a Cooperative Program underachiever. He believes his election is a turning point signaling the time when a church's total involvement in missions will be considered rather than the percentage it gives to CP.
He pointed out that his church has “one of the largest alliances with the International Mission Board ever formed in the history of our denomination and nothing's been said about it: The Kurdish alliance. There is a lady who had said my husband is in Kurdistan now because of your alliance. My son is going for two years.
“Why was that not of interest to share with our denomination? Why could they not celebrate what Woodstock is doing instead of highlighting in every article what we are not doing? If I were not 35 years in instead of being the president, I may be one of the alienated. If you can't celebrate a church that gives $3.8 million to missions because we didn't let you handle it, something's wrong.
“Now they may turn around and say to me, “Yeah, but you've got to support the program.” Totally, I agree. But, please, we sent $476,000.”
Southern Baptists “celebrate giving.” Hunt asserts. “We do it in our papers because this church gave this much and this church gave that much. And often times I think we are even guilty when we think about who is going to speak on a program of what percentage they give, not do they have the touch of God, not that they have God's message, not are they doing something unique that we can embrace.
“It may be that we could assign an unreached people group to our churches. Let's encourage them as long as it gets done. Let's quit attempting to tell our churches how to do the great commission. Again we hear in every arena the autonomy of the local church. We learn to celebrate with those who are doing it different but are doing it. Whatever you do, don't talk down or make people look less committed than yourself because you give a percentage to a program when these people may be giving their lives to the great commission. So we've got to celebrate both.”
Hunt hopes that his tenure as president of the SBC will be characterized by challenging pastors to lead. “I really do believe that it goes back to the pulpit. Being a pastor, I don't know of a better way to say it. Whatever concerns me greatly and deeply seems to be what the church buys into. And if the pastor is not burdened about it, it's sort of like the helm that you must always hold steady to care for other people. If you ever let it go, it always veers off course. And I think it is what we've done as a denomination.
“For some reason we've found ourselves in a spirit of despondency and discouragement. Maybe we feel alienated out there in our places of work. And I think somehow or another we need to reach out and say again, ‘We care, but let's get our priority back.' And I think for Southern Baptists we need once again to embrace what brought us here in the first place.
“We've always been great evangelistic, zealous witnesses for Jesus Christ. We've always believed in taking it to the nations, but in recent days we've spend more time talking about how much we give to taking it to the nations instead of taking it to the nations. I want to balance that if I can. I want a balance somewhere.”