Posted 6/18/03
Graham calls Southern
Baptists to be salt and light
By Michael Clingenpeel
Virginia Religious Herald
PHOENIX–President Jack Graham urged the Southern Baptist Convention to penetrate a decaying culture and illuminate a dark world rather than retreat into a subculture that makes no difference in the world.
During his address to about 7,000 messengers and guests at the opening session of the SBC annual meeting in Phoenix, Graham asked his audience to make “Kingdom First” a way of life, not just the convention's theme.
“Our priority, our prayer, our purpose, our passion is exalting the King and expanding the kingdom,” said Graham, who delivered his 40-minute address based on Jesus' Sermon on the Mount. Southern Baptists, said the Plano, Texas, pastor, must seize an opportunity to demonstrate God's kingdom, not just define it.
| Jack Graham |
The world is “a decaying, dark place,” where man is “inventing new ways to demonstrate his sinful depravity,” Graham warned. Recalling truths he learned as a Sunbeam, a missions group popular in Southern Baptist churches almost a half century ago, Graham said Southern Baptists can “engage our culture and maximize our influence” by becoming “salt and sunshine.”
The president lamented that there is so little difference between the way Christians live and the way the world lives, citing a divorce rate among Christians that rivals divorce among non-believers. Southern Baptists cannot “retreat from the battle,” he said.
Playing off Jesus' metaphor for disciples as “the salt of the earth,” Graham invited the crowd to preserve, irritate and stimulate the culture rather than compromising or keeping the gospel to themselves.
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“Can you imagine the moral condition of our world without Bible-believing, kingdom-living Christians?” he asked. In a veiled reference to the SBC's revision of the Baptist Faith & Message in 2000, he congratulated the convention for preaching Jesus' “salty truth without compromise.”
Graham, pastor of 21,000-member Prestonwood Baptist Church, also asked messengers to become lights in a dark world by being conspicuous, consistent, compelling and consumed in their witness. Believers walk the fine line between being "audio-visual for Jesus Christ" without "turning the spotlight on us."
“The world doesn't expect perfection in us, but they should expect consistency from us,” said Graham, who cited the International Mission Board's campaign to collect food for Iraqis, the ministry of Southern Baptist military chaplains during Gulf War II and the North American Mission Board's disaster relief teams in New York City following 9/11 as examples of ways “Southern Baptists are glowing for Jesus Christ.”
Graham applauded the efforts of Southern Baptists in opposition of abortion and commended legislation outlawing “partial-birth abortion” President Bush is expected to sign soon. But he said the best way to be light is “not to outshout the darkness, but to outlive the darkness.”
The most important question Southern Baptists face, according to Graham, is whether they will “shine and salt the culture in the extreme darkness and decay of our time” by becoming “companies of salt and light.”
Messengers ended the session by reciting the Lord's Prayer, twice repeating the phrase “Thine is the kingdom.”
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