Ronnie Floyd to be nominated for SBC president

Posted: 5/08/06

Ronnie Floyd to be nominated for SBC president

By Greg Warner

Associated Baptist Press

SPRINGDALE, Ark. (ABP)—Ronnie Floyd, pastor of the largest Southern Baptist church in Arkansas, will be nominated as president of the Southern Baptist Convention next month.

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Posted: 5/08/06

Ronnie Floyd to be nominated for SBC president

By Greg Warner

Associated Baptist Press

SPRINGDALE, Ark. (ABP)—Ronnie Floyd, pastor of the largest Southern Baptist church in Arkansas, will be nominated as president of the Southern Baptist Convention next month.

Georgia pastor Johnny Hunt, who until a week ago was the announced nominee favored by the SBC’s leaders, will instead nominate Floyd. Hunt, pastor of First Baptist Church of Woodstock, Ga., announced his change of plans in a news release posted May 7 on the website of Floyd’s church, First Baptist of Springdale, Ark.

This is the second time Hunt has stepped aside for another candidate. In 2004, he was in line to be elected president before current president Bobby Welch’s nomination was announced. Hunt ultimately nominated Welch, who concludes his second term this year. Again this year, he will nominate the candidate who apparently will have the backing of the SBC’s leaders.

The presidency has been the key to gaining and retaining control of the 16 million-member denomination and its agencies. The SBC’s fundamentalist leaders have controlled the position for almost three decades, usually running unopposed.

Unlike most previous years, however, the leadership’s candidate likely will face opposition from one or more other factions in the convention—most notably a loose-knit group of younger conservatives protesting what they call the leadership’s narrow and exclusivist track record. The election is set for the first day of the June 13-14 convention in Greensboro, N.C.

The dark horse in this year’s presidential election could be Wade Burleson, the International Mission Board trustee whose complaints about exclusionary IMB policies almost cost him his spot on the board.

Burleson participated in the meeting of younger conservatives May 2-3 that produced the “Memphis Declaration,” a statement of repentance for the triumphalism, arrogance and isolationism the signers said threatens the SBC’s integrity.

Complicating the picture this year, a blue-ribbon SBC panel is calling for the election of officers who come from churches that contribute at least 10 percent of their undesignated receipts to the denomination’s central budget—a standard few recent presidents could meet.

First Baptist Church of Springdale reported $221,000 in gifts to the SBC’s Cooperative Program budget in 2005, representing 1.85 percent of undesignated receipts of $11,952,137. However, the church reported a total of $489,862 given for all Southern Baptist causes, which would include special missions offerings, and more than $2.6 million given to all world evangelism and mission causes.

Emmanuel Baptist Church in Enid, Okla., where Burleson is pastor, gave $105,000 to the Cooperative Program in 2005, representing 14 percent of undesignated receipts of $750,000.

Another faction making waves this year is the SBC’s Calvinists. Increasingly organized and vocal, they will likely have a candidate to support, at least for first vice president. Mark Dever, pastor of Capitol Hill Baptist Church in Washington, D.C., is expected to be nominated for SBC office, most likely first vice president. Dever was traveling out of the country and could not be reached for comment. Capitol Hill Baptist Church would not release giving records.

The vice presidential offices—more honorary than powerful—usually attract little attention before the June convention. This year, however, two confirmed nominees have surfaced for second vice president.

Wiley Drake, pastor of First Southern Baptist Church in Buena Park, Calif., will be nominated by Bill Dodson, a pastor in Kentucky. Drake is a regular fixture at Southern Baptist conventions, leading the charge in the SBC’s boycott of Disney and frequently making resolutions on a number of topics.

J. D. Greear, pastor of the Summit Church in Durham, N.C., also will be nominated for second vice president, said Daniel Akin, president of Southeastern Baptist Theological Seminary in Wake Forest, N.C., who is expected to nominate him.

Greear was touted as representative of the “young leaders in the SBC,” but Drake participated in the recent meeting in Memphis organized by younger pastors.

Neither church meets the proposed standard for Cooperative Program giving. Drake’s church reported $1,000 given through the Cooperative Program last year, just over 1 percent of the church’s reported receipts of $96,450. Greear’s church reports $16,500 in gifts through the Cooperative Program, slightly less than 1 percent of the church’s total undesignated receipts of $1.7 million.

The Southern Baptist Convention has been working to revive sluggish Cooperative Program giving, which funds the denomination’s mission boards and other agencies. A February report of the Ad Hoc Cooperative Program Committee calls for the election of future convention officers on both the state and national levels from churches that give at least 10 percent through the Cooperative Program.


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