South Carolina Pastor is Surprise Choice to Head Southern Baptists

c. 2006 Religion News Service GREENSBORO, N.C. _ Southern Baptists elected a little-known South Carolina pastor Tuesday (June 13) in an unusual three-way race for leadership of the nation’s largest Protestant denomination. Frank Page, the 53-year-old pastor of First Baptist Church of Taylors, S.C., was elected in the first day of the two-day annual meeting […]

c. 2006 Religion News Service

GREENSBORO, N.C. _ Southern Baptists elected a little-known South Carolina pastor Tuesday (June 13) in an unusual three-way race for leadership of the nation’s largest Protestant denomination.

Frank Page, the 53-year-old pastor of First Baptist Church of Taylors, S.C., was elected in the first day of the two-day annual meeting attended by about 11,000 messengers, or delegates.


Page squeaked by with a slim majority _ 50.48 percent _ of the vote, while his opponents, Ronnie Floyd of Springdale, Ark., and Jerry Sutton of Nashville, Tenn., split the remaining votes with about 24 percent each.

Page was clearly stunned by the vote, and told reporters that he had not expected to win but planned to work with a range of Baptists on evangelism and missions.

“I am a little taken aback by this,” said Page, who has pastored growing churches at a time when many in his denomination have plateaued. “I believe it’s not about me. … I truly believe it is God’s people who are saying we want to see a broadened involvement. We want to see an emphasis where it needs to be and that’s not on a personality. It’s on a cause.”

Before and after the vote, observers said his selection marked a sea change for the denomination. One of his opponents, Floyd, had been endorsed by three of the denomination’s six seminary presidents.

“If he represents a much higher percentage, that shows much more dissatisfaction out there than what the party in power is perceiving,” said David Key, director of Baptist Studies at Emory University in Atlanta, in an interview before the convention.

Richard Land, president of the Southern Baptist Ethics & Religious Liberty Commission, said Page’s outspoken support of the denomination’s central funding program hit a nerve for the voting delegates.

Southern Baptist churches currently give an average of 6.6 percent of income to the denomination, a decline from 10.7 percent in 1980, said Anthony Jordan of Oklahoma, the chairman of an ad hoc committee charged with studying the issue.


Delegates adopted a plan to increase giving, but turned down a proposal that would have urged churches to increase their contributions to 10 percent. Page’s church currently gives a larger percentage to the funding program than either of his opponents’ churches.

“The majority of the messengers want even more emphasis on it and more practicing what is preached when it comes to (Cooperative Program) giving,” Land said.

The election was a highlight of the meeting’s first day, and a reflection of some of the divisions in the nation’s largest Protestant denomination. In recent years, a contested presidential race has been unusual.

Controlled by conservatives for more than two decades, the religious body now finds itself wrestling with internal problems, reflected in disputes from the convention floor on how the denomination’s missions boards should be managed.

Earlier this year, the denomination’s International Mission Board attempted to remove a trustee who questioned some of the board’s new policies as emphasizing “nonessential doctrines.”

That trustee, Oklahoma pastor Wade Burleson, submitted a motion at the Greensboro meeting requesting an investigation of the board. He cited concerns about “manipulation of the nominating process” of the appointment of board trustees and the “suppression of dissent by trustees in the minority.”


The motion was scheduled for discussion Tuesday night.

Morris Chapman, president of the Southern Baptists’ executive committee, urged his fellow Baptists to not let minor divisions keep them from a focus on evangelism.

“We have to ask ourselves: Are we unprepared to saturate the Earth with the gospel? Sometimes we seem better prepared to compete than to cooperate. … I appeal to every Southern Baptist pastor: Major on the majors in our churches.”

(OPTIONAL TRIM FOLLOWS)

In other action:

_ Delegates rejected a recommendation from the church’s executive committee that the Woman’s Missionary Union be invited to become an entity of the Southern Baptist Convention. That vote keeps the women’s organization as an auxiliary. In past conventions, some delegates have questioned whether the auxiliary was focused solely on promoting Southern Baptist missions.

_ As they did at last year’s convention, Southern Baptists witnessed the baptisms of new converts at the start and end of some of their sessions. Speakers throughout the meeting are challenging Baptists to continue the denomination’s “Everyone Can” campaign _ started by outgoing president Bobby Welch of Daytona Beach, Fla. _ to reverse a declining rate of baptisms.

KRE/PH END BANKS

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