c. 2005 Religion News Service

NASHVILLE, Tenn. _ With a baptismal pool placed prominently below the stage, Southern Baptists opened their annual meeting Tuesday (June 21) emphasizing their goal of baptizing a million people by October 2006.

Seven-year-old Luke Charlton was the first baptismal candidate who mounted the steps to the blue pool and was dipped below the water’s surface.

“I was really scared,” he told the thousands of Baptists from across the country who witnessed his baptism. But he said he was glad he went through with it and hoped he would be an example.

“I want my baby brother to do it, too,” said Luke, a member of First Baptist Church Donnelton in Nashville.

Troubled by statistics that show a decline in baptisms in recent years, leaders of the country’s largest Protestant denomination are redoubling efforts to evangelize and baptize.

A sign with big letters reading “Everyone Can!” loomed over the stage, carrying the theme of a campaign the denomination’s president began last fall with a cross-country bus tour. The drive to baptize at least a million new believers formally begins in October.

The two-day convention here was preceded by a weekend of door-to-door evangelizing by thousands of members in Nashville.

“If we’re going to talk about doing it, we ought to be doing it,” said the Rev. Bobby Welch, president of the Southern Baptist Convention.

“There are over 10,000 churches out there where none of them in the church, including the pastor, saw one person baptized last year,” Welch said Monday at a pastors conference preceding the annual meeting. “That will not happen in this convention. It’s going to happen here. And maybe that will rekindle the flame in the hearts and souls of our churches and our pastors.”

A report published this spring declared, “Evangelistically the denomination is on a path of slow but discernible deterioration.” The report, written by church growth expert Thom S. Rainer of Southern Baptist Theological Seminary, found the number of Southern Baptists baptized in 2003 was not much different than those baptized in 1950.

Speakers at the pastors conference expressed concern about congregations that need a boost in enthusiasm and evangelism.

“There’s nothing deader than dead orthodoxy,” said the Rev. Jerry Falwell, pastor of Thomas Road Baptist Church in Lynchburg, Va., who became a Southern Baptist after a conservative resurgence in the denomination.

“Orthodoxy on ice is just as damaging as liberalism on fire.”

On Tuesday, President Bush addressed attendees by satellite, commending them for their devotion to God and country. He praised Southern Baptists for defending “the sacred institution of marriage,” prompting a standing ovation from a conservative denomination staunchly opposed to same-sex marriage.

“It is always a blessing when our nation has a president who really knows the Lord,” said Welch in introducing Bush. Later in the day, Welch was re-elected to a second one-year term as president.

In other business, Southern Baptists approved a long-debated change in a legal declaration of its relationship with New Orleans Baptist Theological Seminary. Under the change, the Southern Baptist Convention is a “sole member” of the seminary.

MO/RB END BANKS