LOUISVILLE, Ky. (ABP) — With a schedule reminiscent of a whistle-stop political campaign, Southern Baptist Convention president Bobby Welch is riding a star-spangled bus through 48 states in an effort to reverse a decline in Southern Baptist evangelism.
Welch, who was elected SBC president in June, announced plans for his ambitious 20,000-mile journey a few hours after his election. After making at least one stop in each of the 48 contiguous states, Welch plans to board a plane to visit Alaska and Hawaii.
His 45-foot bus features bold, custom-designed graphics and a 25-day travel itinerary. The anticipated cost, which is being footed by his Florida congregation, is $50,000. The bus was built by the same company that built one for President Bush's re-election campaign.
From Daytona, the bus tour headed up the East Coast to New England. After traveling across the Midwest and south to Texas, Welch and company will take a short break before heading west, finishing the road portion of the trip in Vancouver, Canada, on Oct. 5.
Welch's travel team includes a schedule coordinator and a photographer/videographer, both of whom are members of his church in Daytona Beach; a freelance reporter for Baptist Press; and two professional drivers. Team members sleep on the bus as it travels from state to state, logging up to 600 miles during overnight legs of the trip.
When elected convention president in June, Welch said he was worried about a four-year decline in baptisms in the Southern Baptist Convention. Though the denomination is growing overall, he said, it is not keeping pace with the nation's population growth.
Welch, pastor of First Baptist of Daytona Beach for 30 years and co-creator of FAITH, a Sunday school-based evangelism strategy used by churches across the nation, said millions of Americans believe in God and the Bible but have no church affiliation.
“The church has failed those people,” he said during a stop in Louisville, Ky., Sept. 7, adding that Christians have been “walling ourselves like a fortress,” keeping busy with activities for members while ignoring others. “We've got to do better,” he said.
Welch said he first considered traveling across the nation in his Suburban or an RV. As plans escalated, he said, he realized: “If you went to all that work and effort and trouble, you would need to make it count.”
Noting that “we have had a variety of guests on board,” Welch said reporters from CNN, PBS, the Boston Globe, the Orlando Sentinel and Religion News Service have conducted interviews on the bus.
The tour is making stops at selected Baptist churches, where Welch is rallying support for his goal for SBC congregations to baptize 1 million people in 12 months, a jump of more than 600,000 from last year's total of 377,357 baptisms.
“One of the primary gauges for Southern Baptists of how well the denomination is doing is baptisms, and the conservatives are a little worried that the number of baptisms isn't growing as they would like,” Barry Hankins, an associate professor of history at Baylor University, told the Boston Globe. “The conservatives obviously have a stake in not having a decline on their watch.”
Welch's presentation in churches along his trek includes a short, fast-moving video with many images of terrorist attacks and warfare. Welch, a wounded and decorated Vietnam veteran, repeatedly drew analogies between the evangelistic campaign and the war on terrorism, saying that “Satan is the arch-terrorist.”
Welch said that on Sept. 11, 2001, he wondered whether the victims of the terrorist attacks were going to heaven or hell, and whether anyone had shared the gospel with them, “because now is too late.”
Welch said his bus tour “came out of a desire to connect with all Southern Baptists.” It includes 56 scheduled stops for evangelism rallies and door-to-door witnessing, as well as spontaneous evangelism encounters — a normal procedure for the affable Welch.
When the bus reached the Wilmington, Del., suburb of Newport and the team stopped for lunch at KFC, Welch spotted a young man entering the restaurant and spent several minutes with him in the doorway. Anthony Mays, 17, sporting a vintage San Diego Clippers cap, seemed a bit awed by the “one foot in hell and one foot in heaven” discussion. “It was kind of crazy,” Mays said afterwards. “When he saw me, it was like he knew me.
Later in the barnstorming tour, the bus pulled off the road for dinner in Warwick, R.I. As everyone else piled into the restaurant, Welch stayed outside, chatting with a young woman, Becky, who was sitting on the pavement waiting for a ride. He sat down beside her to talk. Eventually they are praying together.
Welch said he also plans to make up to 15 unscheduled stops at churches along the way to visit pastors, “hug their neck and pray with them.” He made the first such stop at Crestwood Baptist Church in Louisville, Ky., where he and Pastor Troy Dobbs prayed together in the church's worship center.
During an evening rally at Highview Baptist Church in Louisville, Welch said the “Everyone Can” Kingdom Challenge for Evangelism, with its goal of 1 million baptisms, will be launched next June at the SBC annual meeting in Nashville.
“We could witness, win and baptize 1 million people right now. We have the spiritual muscle to do it,” Welch declared. “There are two reasons we do not. One of the problems is a lot of that spiritual strength is suffering from atrophy. … The other is we can't get two muscles working together at the same time.
“The quest,” he added, “is to generate and create this unity of purpose for evangelism.”
-30-
— Compiled from the Western Recorder of Kentucky and other sources.