TAYLORS, S.C. (ABP) — Frank Page, a South Carolina pastor with a record of strong financial support of the denomination's budget, reportedly will be nominated for Southern Baptist Convention president next month.
Page's decision ensures that messengers to the June 13-14 annual convention will have a choice between two distinct visions for the SBC's future. It also means Wade Burleson, widely speculated as a candidate for the post, will not be nominated.
Page is expected to face Arkansas pastor Ronnie Floyd, who is the favorite of the SBC's established leadership, which has controlled the presidency for 27 years. But Floyd has been criticized for his church's weak support of the Cooperative Program, the SBC's central budget that supports the denomination's ministries and agencies.
First Baptist Church of Springdale, Ark., where Floyd has been pastor for 20 years, gave $32,000 — or 0.27 percent of its $12 million in undesignated receipts — to the Cooperative Program last year. During the same period, First Baptist Church of Taylors, S.C., where Page is pastor, gave $535,000 — or 12.1 percent — of its $4.4 million in undesignated receipts.
A blue-ribbon SBC panel, alarmed by sluggish CP giving, is calling for Southern Baptists to elect officers who represent churches that contribute at least 10 percent.
Page was unavailable May 19 but his staff confirmed his decision. Burleson said he talked to Page earlier in the day.
“He's going to allow his name to be nominated,” Burleson, pastor of Emmanuel Baptist Church in Enid, Okla., told Associated Baptist Press.
Burlseon has been an outspoken advocate for the need of new leaders in the SBC who will be more inclusive of conservatives with different views and not enforce narrow parameters of “conformity.” Burleson said recently he would be nominated for president if a candidate did not arise who was committed to the same goals.
“Because Frank is announcing that he will be a candidate for the presidential nomination, I stand by what I said,” Burleson told ABP May 19. “The conversations I have had with Frank have been wonderful,” he added, suggesting Page will seek the same goals Burleson has articulated.
“We must stop narrowing the parameters of cooperation in the area of missions and evangelism,” Burleson wrote in a May 16 blog posting. “We cannot, we must not, define Southern Baptists in more narrow terms than our Baptist Faith and Message, and more importantly, we cannot disenfranchise committed, conservative Southern Baptists who hold to the integrity of the Scriptures but differ on the interpretations of minor doctrines of the sacred text.”
This will be the first time since 1994 that the SBC presidency has been seriously contested, with at least two candidates announced ahead of time.
Page was courted as a candidate by Burleson and other conservatives anxious for a change in the SBC's direction. As recently as May 16, Page declined the nomination. “I did not have a peace about it, and I can't move forward if I don't have that,” he told ABP.
It is not known what factors changed his mind.
Page's Taylors church, located in the Greenville-Spartanburg area of upstate South Carolina, has an average weekly attendance of about 2,000. It gave $535,000 to the Cooperative Program through the South Carolina Baptist Convention in 2005 — or 12.1 percent of its undesignated budget of $4,407,392.
Floyd already has won the endorsements of three SBC seminary presidents — Paige Patterson of Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary; Danny Akin of Southeastern Baptist Theological Seminary; and Al Mohler of Southern Baptist Theological Seminary — all loyal to the current SBC leadership. The endorsements prompted a rare warning from Morris Chapman, the SBC's chief executive, who said it was inappropriate for agency leaders to become involved in SBC politics.
Floyd's Springdale church, located in the fast-growing Fayetteville-Springdale-Bentonville-Rogers area of northwest Arkansas, has an average Sunday morning attendance of about 7,000.
The church gave only $32,000 through the Arkansas Baptist State Convention to the Cooperative Program last year, or one-fourth of 1 percent of its undesignated receipts of $11,952,137. According to church leaders, the congregation gave an additional $189,000 — about 1.8 percent of undesignated receipts — directly to the Southern Baptist Convention's budget, bypassing the state convention, and another $300,000 to “Southern Baptist causes,” including $25,000 to SBC seminaries.
Floyd defended his church giving record. “It's real difficult to spend percentages,” he told a conservative newspaper. “You spend dollars and cents. I don't think we need to be judging a church in relationship to what it gives percentile-wise. It violates the whole essence of the Cooperative Program, which is voluntary cooperation.”
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