The convention is over! By the end of the day I was ready to be able to say that. Most of the important business was handled on Tuesday and today was more reports. You can only handle so many reports before they become too much to handle, but we persevered.
Once again it is great to be a Southern Baptist! The worship was great, and the president of the North Carolina Baptist Convention preached from Revelation 5. He preached a challenging message reminding us to live with eyes fixed on the hope that we have in Christ. The most challenging thing he said was, “if God saved everyone we prayed for for the last years, how many people would be in heaven.” That is a humbling thought, church let’s pray that God would save souls!
The seminaries all gave their reports, and all of our seminaries are doing well, enrollment is up and they are financially stable. The SBC trains more pastors than any other denomination. We event train pastors for other denominations. It is humbling to think though that we need more people to answer the call of God to serve His church. If all the baby boomer pastors would retire this year, their would be a massive shortage of pastors to serve the local church. Let’s pray that more people will answer the call of God to serve His church!
That vote tallies were released for the churches the Executive Committee voted to disfellowship with. The convention body voted to reject the appeal of all three churches. I will talk in more detail about this at a later date, it’s really difficult in this format to share all that was going on in those three churches.
-Freedom church in FL had hired a pastor who admitted to sex abuse. 96% of the convention body voted to reject their appeal.
-Fern Creek church in Ky employed a female lead pastor. 92% of the convention body voted to reject their appeal.
-Saddleback church in Ca ordained several women to the office of pastor. 88% of the convention body voted to reject their appeal
I was proud of the decorum in the convention hall today. We should grieve when a sister church refuses to repent and we are forced to disfellowship with them. I’m grateful Southern Baptists were humble and not cheering when the vote was announced.
Continue to pray for our convention and I look forward to worshipping with you Sunday!
Blake Wallace
Pastor
FBC LG OK
