By Scott Barkley
Baptist Press

ANAHEIM — With $4 million now pledged from Send Relief toward funding sexual abuse reforms over the next year, Executive Committee members voted June 13 to rescind their recently approved recommendations for that same objective.

EC Chair Rolland Slade, overseeing his final trustee meeting, extended thanks for the gift to Send Relief and its president, Bryant Wright, as well as North American Mission Board President Kevin Ezell and International Mission Board President Paul Chitwood.

“We certainly appreciate you all coming together in a sign of unity,” Slade said, adding his appreciation both from a denominational leadership perspective as well as a Southern Baptist pastor.

Trustees had agreed June 2 to reconfigure overage allocations for the 2021-22 and 2022-23 budgets of up to $9 million total for funding sexual abuse reforms in the Southern Baptist Convention. A $4 million gift through Send Relief issued on June 8 led to a unanimous vote to rescind those recommendations. [Read more…]

By Robin Cornetet
Baptist Press

ANAHEIM, Calif. — Daniel Dickard, senior pastor of Friendly Avenue Baptist Church in Greensboro, N.C., was elected president of the 2023 SBC Pastors’ Conference on June 13.

Dickard won the election by a ballot vote, defeating African Christian University’s dean of theology Voddie Baucham by a vote of 690 (50.85 percent) to 608 (44.8 percent). Fifty-nine ballots (4.35 percent), were disallowed. Next year’s pastors’ conference will precede the SBC annual meeting to be held in New Orleans.

In his nomination, Jordan Easley described Dickard as a pastor in the trenches, “who is studying and preparing, preaching and praying, and shepherding week by week just like all of us. On Sunday mornings, you will find Daniel in a Sunday School class teaching the Bible. He’s greeting people in between services, and like many of us do every week, he is preaching the perfect Word of God faithfully.”

Easley, senior pastor of First Baptist Church of Cleveland, Tenn., said among the reasons he nominated Dickard was Dickard’s love of the Southern Baptist Convention, his admiration for pastors both young and old and his desire to lead a conference that blesses, equips, encourages and motivates pastors in their ministries. [Read more…]

By Robin Cornetet
Kentucky Today

ANAHEIM, Calif. — With the weight of so many important decisions facing Southern Baptists in the coming days, hundreds gathered to pray at the Anaheim Convention Center June 12.

Arkansas pastor Bill Elliff and Robby Gallaty, pastor of Long Hollow Baptist Church in Hendersonville, led audience members on what the men hoped would be a journey where God would meet each person in a real and tangible way.

Within hours, the cavernous room they occupied would be filled with 2022 SBC Pastors’ Conference attendees. By Tuesday morning, an estimated 9,000 people from across the U.S. were set to assemble for the 2022 Southern Baptist Convention annual meeting.

“One of our prayers from the beginning was that God would meet with us tonight in a tangible, palatable way and He would make us aware of His presence,” Gallaty said. [Read more…]

By Grace Thornton
The Alabama Baptist

ANAHEIM, Calif. — Connie Dixon covered some miles this past year as she served as national Woman’s Missionary Union president. She visited 20 states, had 29 speaking opportunities, attended 94 Zoom calls, recorded five videos and two podcasts, wrote 27 articles and walked through 61 airports.

“I have loved every minute of it, but more than anything I am so honored to serve as president of an organization I love so much,” said Dixon, a member of First Baptist Church Elida, N.M.

The year was a “whirlwind,” she said, and in a way, this year’s WMU missions celebration and annual meeting on June 12 mimicked that. Instead of gathering at a venue near the convention center, participants loaded up on three buses for an experience called Embark: WMU’s Rolling Missions Adventure and traveled around the greater Los Angeles area to get to know the churches and ministries there a little better. [Read more…]

By Brandon Elrod
Baptist Press

ANAHEIM, Calif. — Following a week of Southern Baptist seminary students engaging neighborhoods around Anaheim, 34 churches engaged their communities through various outreach events Saturday, June 11, through Crossover, which partnered with Send Relief to host a Serve Tour experience that took place ahead of the 2022 Southern Baptist Convention Annual Meeting.

“Southern California is a rich environment of ethnically and racially diverse peoples,” said Pete Ramirez, recently elected executive director of the California Southern Baptist Convention (CSBC). Ramirez described the many different religious views and ideas spread across Southern California.

Local churches, the Orange County Southern Baptist Association (OCSBA), the CSBC and the North American Mission Board (NAMB) combined efforts to equip local churches to love and serve their communities through sports camps, block parties and other outreach-oriented events. [Read more…]

By Baptist Press

RICHMOND, Va. — The greatest problem in the world is lostness.

The only solution to the world’s greatest problem is the Gospel.

The biblical example for taking the Gospel to the lost is through physical presence.

And for Southern Baptists, physical missionary presence to the nations is how we cooperate to fulfill both the Great Commission and the Great Multitude pictured in Revelation 7:9.

The International Mission Board’s purpose is encapsulated in the steadfast presence of missionaries among the nations. As leaders of the 177-year-old Southern Baptist organization prayed about communicating the purpose of the IMB to ever-changing audiences, they realized that a strong brand was vital to the organization’s continued growth.

Missionary presence is at the heart of the IMB’s rebrand, revealed to the public in conjunction with the Southern Baptist Convention’s annual meeting in Anaheim, Calif., and related events June 12-15. More than a new logo, the brand includes a strong narrative of IMB’s history and purpose that joins the existing mission and vision statements. [Read more…]

By Diana Chandler
Baptist Press

ALPHARETTA, Ga. — Send Relief announced its intent June 8 to give $3 million to fund the proposed Sexual Abuse Task Force (SATF) recommendations for sexual abuse reform, and an additional $1 million to establish a survivor care fund to provide trauma care for survivors and trauma training for pastors.

The $1 million would be allocated from Send Relief funds designated for its ongoing mission to protect children and families, according to a joint statement from Send Relief President Bryant Wright, North American Mission Board President Kevin Ezell and International Mission Board President Paul Chitwood. Send Relief is a joint compassion ministry of NAMB and IMB.

“Send Relief commits the $3 million in one-time funds the SBC Executive Committee estimates it needs to carry out reforms being recommended to the SBC messengers at the 2022 SBC Annual Meeting. This $3 million would come from Send Relief undesignated funds, not from Cooperative Program donations or gifts to the Annie Armstrong Easter Offering and Lottie Moon Christmas Offering,” Chitwood, Ezell and Wright said in the joint statement. [Read more…]

Pastors, SBC leaders call for action in response to sex abuse report

By Diane Chandler
Baptist Press

RALEIGH, N.C. — Former Southern Baptist Convention president J.D. Greear says he’s encouraged by the SBC’s bottom-up structure putting power in the hands of lay members.

“I want to be in a convention where the people have the power. Because like we see, usually it is the leaders who go corrupt more quickly than the people,” he said in a May 30 special broadcast of his Ask Me Anything podcast.

Among the family of some 50,000 Southern Baptist churches and missions, pastors are leading their congregations in responding to the messenger-commanded Guidepost Solutions report of the SBC Executive Committee’s handling of sexual abuse allegations spanning two decades.

”We recognize that when you have unchecked power in the hands of a few, as it was in the case of the SBC — you’ve got corruption there — it’s people that hold accountable the leaders, rather than vice versa,” Greear said.  [Read more…]