NASHVILLE, Tenn. (ABP) — Bobby Welch was re-elected to a second term as president of the Southern Baptist Convention without opposition June 21.
Welch, pastor of First Baptist Church in Daytona Beach, Fla., has endeared himself to Southern Baptists with his humor and emphasis on grass-roots evangelism. Messengers to the 2005 SBC meeting, who numbered 11,900, elected him to another one-year term as president of the largest non-Catholic denomination in the United States, following a longtime pattern of granting presidents a second term.
Welch made a revitalization of SBC evangelism the hallmark of his first term, challenging Southern Baptists to convert and baptize 1 million new Christians in the next year — a program called “Everyone Can.” During the weekend prior to the SBC meeting in Nashville, Tenn., Southern Baptists held their largest door-to-door witnessing effort ever, according to convention leaders.
Alabama evangelist Junior Hill, who nominated Welch, praised him for stirring Southern Baptists out of their indifference. “A prophet has been among us.”
Southern Baptists elected another pastor and an evangelist to their other top offices.
Jerry Sutton, pastor of Two Rivers Baptist Church in the host city of Nashville, was elected first vice president with 72 percent of the vote in a runoff with Dan Spencer, pastor of First Baptist Church of Thomasville, Ga. Sutton is a longtime conservative leader in the convention. Spencer, 37, was offered as one of the “next generation” of SBC leaders. Mike Boyd, pastor of Wallace Memorial Baptist Church in Knoxville, Tenn., also was nominated on the first ballot.
Roy Fish, professor of evangelism at Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary in Fort Worth, Texas, for more than 40 years, was elected second vice president with 80 percent of the vote.
In electing Fish, messengers turned back the nomination of Wiley Drake, pastor of First Southern Baptist Church in Buena Park, Calif., who has become well known to messengers as a frequent maker of motions and resolutions during the annual convention. Drake, who instigated the SBC boycott of Disney in 1997, was introduced by nominator Bill Dodson of Kentucky as “Mr. Resolution, a man who is seldom wrong and never in doubt, and everyone's favorite messenger.”
“I believe it is time for us to let him speak from the platform microphone,” Dodson joked. And if Drake were elected, he added, “we all will benefit from fewer motions and less resolutions.”
Two other officers were re-elected — James Wells, a director of missions from Nixa, Mo., as registration secretary, and John Yeats of Oklahoma City, Okla., editor of the Oklahoma Baptist, as recording secretary.