INDIANAPOLIS (ABP) — Florida pastor Bobby Welch won the first contested Southern Baptist Convention presidential election in a decade June 15, then directed his characteristic zeal for evangelism toward reversing the SBC's numerical decline.
Welch, pastor of First Baptist Church in Daytona Beach, defeated North Carolina pastor Al Jarrell, 3,997 to 1,020, or 79.6 percent to 20.4 percent. Welch succeeds Jack Graham, pastor of Prestonwood Baptist Church in suburban Dallas, who completed his second one-year term at the Indianapolis meeting and was ineligible for re-election.
Welch, 61, gained SBC fame as a founder of the FAITH program, which incorporates an evangelistic emphasis into Sunday school. Launched at Welch's church, FAITH has been marketed by the SBC's LifeWay Christian Resources and widely replicated in Southern Baptist churches.
He arrived in Indianapolis as the only announced candidate for the SBC's top position. But in a change from recent precedent, Welch faced a challenger. Jarrell, pastor of Riverside Baptist Church in Merry Hill, N.C., was nominated by Dennis Conner, pastor of tiny Cashie Baptist Church in Windsor, N.C.
Although Conner said he was “under no illusion Rev. Jarrell may be elected,” he decided to nominate him anyway because, during the past nine years, Conner has become concerned that the SBC's leadership is “growing further and further and further away from the grassroots of this great convention.”
During the 1980s, SBC presidential elections were hotly contested, as fundamentalists repeatedly defeated moderates for the office. After the vote in 1990– in which fundamentalist Morris Chapman defeated moderate Daniel Vestal — moderates stopped fielding a candidate for the presidency.
In 1992, the next year an incumbent was not eligible for re-election, three conservative candidates vied for the presidency. And two years later, two candidates competed. But since 1994, all presidential elections have been won by an unopposed conservative candidate.
In a news conference after his election, Welch pledged to go to great lengths — literally — to encourage the SBC to baptize a million people each year. Late this summer, he will embark on a 25-day bus tour to all 50 states, he announced.
From the bus, he will urge grassroots Southern Baptists and their leaders to do more to lead people to faith in Jesus Christ and to bring about a transformation in the nation's largest Protestant convention.
The bus-a-thon will be part of a multi-faceted effort to reverse the SBC's numerical decline, he told reporters. In recent years, SBC membership, baptisms and evangelistic efficiency have stagnated or declined, according to denominational statistics. Reversing those trends is vital for the future of both the convention and the nation, stressed Welch.
“As the Southern Baptist Convention celebrates the 25th anniversary of the conservative resurgence, I believe it has also crossed the threshold toward its next great transition,” he said. “In all likelihood, this coming transition will be at least equal in impact to anything in the last 25 years. It is not at all clear where this new transition will lead and leave us as a convention — better, worse or stagnated.”
“Conservative resurgence” is the SBC fundamentalists' term for their successful effort to gain control of the national convention and turn it sharply to the right. Several hundred messengers celebrated the movement's 25th anniversary on the eve of the Indianapolis meeting.
But Welch warned the convention has started to go downhill. “In the next six years, we will be on a path that cannot be changed,” he predicted, urging a “transformation” or movement to get back to the basics of evangelism.
“I don't know what the transitional stage will look like,” he conceded, adding, “But I know we can't tolerate the same-old, same-old.”
Asked to clarify why he claimed the convention is declining, Welch explained: “To say we're plateaued is a compliment. I mean, we're declining. … Baptisms have decreased for the fourth year. We can do better than that. We will do better. And the good news is we've got all the makings for it.”
To boost conversions and baptisms, Welch will take his bus trip to all 50 states and Canada in 25 travel days, beginning Aug. 29. On the trip, he will visit churches and communities of all sizes, seeking out ministry and evangelism needs and encouraging Southern Baptists to lead people to faith in Christ.
As he tours the nation, he will invite state convention executives, evangelism and Sunday school leaders, and newspaper editors to travel with him and talk about convention needs and how to achieve evangelistic success.
Welch also will speak at Baptist meetings “encouraging the unification of the SBC for an evangelism effort.” And next March and April, he will visit as many Southern Baptist churches as possible within a 100-mile radius of Nashville, Tenn., site of the 2005 SBC annual meeting, to promote evangelism. And he plans to launch a unity and evangelism effort at the 2005 meeting.
In addition to changing Southern Baptists' perspectives about evangelism, the efforts should change others' views of Southern Baptists, Welch noted.
“The world knows what Southern Baptists are against,” and some of those things they're appropriately against, he said. And the world knows Southern Baptists have disagreed among themselves, he added.
“But the world needs to know what we are for — sharing the love of Christ with everybody who does not know him,” he said.
If Welch succeeds in leading the SBC to baptize 1 million people per year, he will more than reverse recent declines, which have caused annual baptisms to dip below 400,000.
Welch will celebrate his 30th anniversary at the Daytona church later this summer. He has served as president of the Florida Baptist Convention, vice president of the SBC, and trustee of LifeWay Christian Resources.
A decorated Vietnam veteran who received a Bronze Star for bravery and a Purple Heart for battle wounds, Welch is a graduate of Jacksonville State University in Alabama and New Orleans Baptist Theological Seminary. He and his wife, Maudellen, are the parents of a son, Matthew, and a daughter, Haylee, and four grandchildren.
During his news conference, Welch fielded reporters' questions on a variety of topics, including:
— Public schools.
On the controversial issue of whether Christians should pull their children out of public schools, Welch said, “If the public school system is our best mission field in America, why pull out?”
But Welch offered two caveats. First, “we've got to maintain the right of a parent to exercise their responsibility for raising their own children,” he said, and second, “there probably are places where parents ought to take their children out” of public schools.
SBC messengers later turned back a resolution urging Christians to leave public schools, which some Southern Baptists termed “godless.”
— Federal Marriage Amendment.
Welch affirmed a proposal to define marriage as the union between one man and one woman, which has been offered to counter so-called “same-sex marriages.” Such unions are wrong, he insisted, but he called upon Christians to “approach those people with the same love, grace and kindness we approach all people.”
From his experience as a pastor, Welch said, he believes most homosexuals do not seek to flaunt their lifestyle. “The vast majority are looking for peace, love … and kindness, and when they find it in Christ, they don't need to look elsewhere.”
— Cooperative Baptist Fellowship.
Asked by a reporter how he would relate to the Fellowship, which was formed in 1991 when moderate Southern Baptists gave up trying to regain control of the SBC, Welch said he would work with all who come together to spread the gospel. “I'm going to say, 'Will you join us at this unity of evangelism?' … When they come together and want to share that, then God bless them, wherever they go.”
— Baptist World Alliance.
Earlier in the day, the SBC voted to withdraw from the Baptist World Alliance, comprised of 210 other Baptist conventions from around the globe. The BWA's decision to accept the Fellowship sparked its schism with the SBC, which was fueled by charges that the BWA has become liberal and “anti-American,” which BWA leaders repeatedly have denied.
The division between the SBC and the BWA “will mark a real step forward for the sake of the gospel,” Welch predicted, refusing to call the separation a “split.”
“I believe we [the SBC] will be connected with more like-minded people,” he said. “I believe it will be a win.”
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