INDIANAPOLIS (ABP) – Atlanta-area pastor Johnny Hunt was elected Southern Baptist Convention president over five contenders on the first ballot June 10, returning control of the 16 million-member denomination to its fundamentalist establishment.
On the first day of the 2008 SBC annual meeting in Indianapolis, the pastor of First Baptist Church in Woodstock, Ga., received 3,100 votes (52.94 percent) out of 5,856 ballots cast. His vote thwarted a runoff that many SBC watchers had expected in the record field of candidates.
“In the context of uniting, my heart as president would be more in the context of holding high the flags of what really represents Southern Baptists,” he said, in remarks to reporters immediately following the announcement of his election. “And so I hope to unite our hearts around the things that we believe that Christ is most committed to.”
Hunt said he hopes to represent that view of Southern Baptists to the broader public as well. He lamented that, in their support for conservative issues in the “culture war,” Southern Baptists “oftentimes … come across as only what we're against.”
Hunt will replace South Carolina pastor Frank Page, who won an upset victory to the first of two one-year terms in 2006 as the candidate favored by reform-minded bloggers and younger pastors.
Hunt was widely expected to win that election but pulled out of the contest at the last minute. His triumph this year reflects a return to a pattern that began in 1979, during which the establishment candidate won election in 25 of 27 years. The reformers who supported Page did not coalesce behind a single candidate this year.
The other candidates Hunt defeated were:
— Frank Cox, pastor of North Metro First Baptist Church in Lawrenceville, Ga., who received 1,286 votes (21.96 percent).
— Avery Willis, retired vice president of the SBC International Mission Board, who received 962 votes (16.43 percent).
— Bill Wagner, a former missionary and president of Olivet International University in San Francisco, who received 255 votes (4.35 percent) and was nominated by Wade Burleson, leader of the younger conservatives.
— Les Puryear, another blogger-pastor from Lewisville (N.C.) Baptist Church, who received 188 votes (3.21 percent).
— Wiley Drake, pastor of First Southern Baptist Church in Buena Park, Calif., and a former SBC second vice president, who received 45 votes (0.77 percent).
Many of the reformers — including Burleson — had complained about what they consider an unnecessary narrowing of the parameters of cooperation in Southern Baptist life.
Hunt, widely hailed for his mentoring programs for younger ministers, said he would like to reach out to more young SBC leaders. But, at the news conference, he said that he had not heard complaints about disillusionment with the SBC from the young pastors he sees at conferences.
“I've never had one to ask me about the issue of tongues, women in ministry — I think those are the things that our convention dealt with back during the conservative resurgence — and the ones that really held to that found a real home in the Cooperative Baptist Fellowship,” he said, referring to the moderate group that broke off from the SBC in the 1990s.
Nonetheless, he encouraged Southern Baptists not to dwell on what has divided the convention in the past. “If we keep our hearts on what has united us, it will lead us to our best days in the Southern Baptist Convention,” he predicted.
But Southern Baptists must be realistic, Hunt continued, noting that last year the convention baptized fewer people — with a membership of 16 million — than the convention did in 1950 with six million members. “What's wrong with this picture? We have a larger army [today]. We ought to be taking more territory.”
When asked why the convention is showing a decline — including a slight decline in overall membership — Hunt said pastors must step to the plate and take responsibility. “We can't blame God. We can't blame our denominational leaders.”
“What we [pastors] find important, our people find important,” he observed.
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