c. 2003 Religion News Service
PHOENIX _ Southern Baptists focused on renewing their families and their faith as they gathered for their annual meeting that officially opened Tuesday (June 17).
On the eve of the meeting, thousands attended a Kingdom Family Rally, where they were asked to sign a covenant declaring their willingness to better care for their families by adhering to principles about honoring God and serving their churches.
The Rev. Tom Elliff, chairman of the Southern Baptist Council on Family Life, compared the nation’s divorce statistics to a tornado.
“It’s a demonic storm,” he told pastors and families at the Phoenix Civic Plaza at the Monday evening rally that closed the Southern Baptist Convention’s Pastors Conference. “Roll up your sleeves. Do what you can do to help rescue the families in your church, in this nation, and make a difference in your home.”
On the opening day of the two-day convention, Southern Baptist Convention President Jack Graham continued the message of changing lives when he spoke of the family challenges among his fellow Baptists.
“We must make a difference for the cause of our king,” he said, citing studies that show similarities among Christians and the general population. “Our divorce rate, we’re told, is as high as the divorce rate outside the church and outside the kingdom of God.”
He urged his fellow Baptists to fulfill Jesus’ words about being a “light of the world.”
“Our priority, our prayer, our purpose, our passion is exalting the king and expanding the kingdom.”
Graham was elected to a second one-year term as head of the 16.2 million-member denomination, the nation’s largest Protestant church body.
More than 6,000 delegates, or messengers, to the meeting heard a greeting from their national president, as well. President Bush spoke to them by videotape, reiterating the common values he shares with them that resonated with the themes on family accentuated during the meeting.
“We believe in fostering the culture of life and that marriage and family are sacred institutions,” Bush said.
The Baptists adopted a budget that includes a substantial reduction of funding of the Baptist World Alliance. After funding the global group with $425,000 in 2002-03, the denomination will fund it with $300,000 for the next budget year. The remaining $125,000 will be used for a new “kingdom relationships” initiative, which intends to link “other like-minded Christian bodies” worldwide.
SBC Executive Committee President Morris Chapman said denomination officials have differed with some of the actions of the alliance, which is considering a request for membership from the Cooperative Baptist Fellowship, a moderate group that formed to counter the conservative direction of the Southern Baptist Convention.
Messengers also heard a motion from Chaplain (Capt.) Al Hill, a training and education director for the Navy Chief of Chaplains Office and a messenger to the convention, requesting that ordination be required for the endorsement of military chaplains. That request was referred to the denomination’s North American Mission Board for future consideration.
Baptist leaders also took time Tuesday to honor the three missionaries who were killed in a late December attack on a Baptist hospital in Yemen.
Don Caswell, a missionary who survived the attack, and his family intend to return to the region in August.
“Some people ask, `Why do you go anywhere outside America?” he said. “We were commanded to go by Christ to all the world, not just to those we like or to those that … like us.”
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