New SBC president willing to go to great lengths to increase baptisms_62804

Posted: 6/25/04

New SBC president willing to go
to great lengths to increase baptisms

By Marv Knox

Editor

INDIANAPOLIS–New Southern Baptist Convention President Bobby Welch pledged to go to great lengths–literally–to encourage the SBC to baptize a million people each year.

Late this summer, Welch 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 decline, he told reporters just a few hours after he was elected convention president.

That reversal is vital for the future of both the convention and the nation, stressed Welch, pastor of First Baptist Church in Daytona Beach, Fla.

“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. It began in 1979 and reached its peak in the 1990s. Several hundred messengers celebrated the movement's silver anniversary on the eve of the Indianapolis meeting.

But Welch warned the convention has started to go downhill, and he called for the current transitional period in SBC history to become a time of significant transformation.

“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 the number of 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 will speak in conventions, conferences and other meetings throughout the year, “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. At these meetings, he will promote evangelism.

Finally, he will launch a unity and evangelism effort at the 2005 SBC.

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 called himself a “helper and encourager” and promised to extend his best efforts to see such an evangelistic transformation come about.

“This convention has a God-given purpose,” he added. “We will take the evangelistic challenge of North America right where it needs to be.”

Welch–a decorated Vietnam war veteran–will celebrate his 30th anniversary at the Daytona church later this summer. He has served as president of the Florida Baptist Convention and vice president of the SBC. He also has been a trustee of LifeWay Christian Resources.

Welch is a graduate of Jacksonville State University in Alabama and New Orleans Baptist Theological Seminary.

He and his wife, Maudellen, have a son, Matthew, a daughter, Haylee, and four grandchildren.

During his news conference, Welch fielded reporters' questions on a variety of topics, including:

Public schools.

Prior to the annual meeting, a couple of messengers proposed a resolution calling for Southern Baptist parents to remove their children from “godless,” “government” public schools. At the time of Welch's news conference, a recommendation on that proposal had not been released by the SBC Resolutions Committee.

Welch began by offering 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, with thousands of public schools across the nation, “there probably are places where parents ought to take their children out” of public schools.

“Here's where I am personally,” he said. “Our whole passion is to share the gospel with people who do not have it. … If the public school system is our best mission field in America, why pull out?”

Federal Marriage Amendment.

He 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.

The Fellowship formed in 1991, when so-called moderate Southern Baptists gave up trying to regain control of the SBC and created their own organization, primarily to engage in missions. The animosity between the Fellowship and the SBC has boiled over repeatedly among both groups. A reporter asked how Welch would relate to the Fellowship and work with its members.

“I'm going to say, 'Will you join us at this unity of evangelism?'” Welch said, noting he would work with all who come together to spread the gospel.

“When they come together and want to share that, then God bless them, wherever they go,” he said.

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.”

Concluding his discussion with reporters, Welch returned to where he started: “I'm not getting distracted. The main thing is the main thing. I'm committed to sharing the gospel.”

“The world knows what Southern Baptists are against. … But the world needs to know what we are for–sharing the love of Christ with everybody who does not know him.”

SBC President Bobby Welch