Updated Wednesday, June 11, 2008

N.C. native elected SBC president

From staff and contributed reports

INDIANAPOLIS - Wilmington native Johnny Hunt was elected president of the Southern Baptist Convention (SBC) on the first ballot from among six candidates June 10.

Hunt, pastor of First Baptist Church of Woodstock, Ga., received 3,100 votes, or about 53 percent of the 5,856 ballots cast.

The other candidates and their vote totals were:

- Frank Cox, pastor of North Metro First Baptist Church in Lawrenceville, Ga., who received 1,286 votes (21.96 percent).

- Avery Willis, retired vice president of the SBC International Mission Board, who received 962 votes (16.43 percent).

- Bill Wagner, a former missionary and president of Olivet International University in San Francisco, who received 255 votes (4.35 percent).

- Les Puryear, pastor of Lewisville Baptist Church, who received 188 votes (3.21 percent).

- Wiley Drake, pastor of First Southern Baptist Church in Buena Park, Calif., and a former SBC second vice president, who received 45 votes (0.77 percent).

Hunt, widely hailed for his mentoring programs for younger ministers, said he would like to reach out to more young SBC leaders. But, at the news conference, he said that he had not heard complaints from the young pastors he sees at conferences.

"I've never had one to ask me about the issue of tongues, women in ministry - I think those are the things that our convention dealt with back during the conservative resurgence - and the ones that really held to that found a real home in the Cooperative Baptist Fellowship," he said, referring to the moderate group that broke off from the SBC in the 1990s.

Hunt, who is Lumbee, expressed pride in heritage. He was elected during the same convention at which was formed the first Fellowship of Native American Christians.

Hunt said he wants "to inspire the younger generation to buy in" to the work of the SBC.

"We've been declining as a denomination," he said.

Hunt said he has some ideas for turning the SBC around, but did not elaborate. Historically he feels SBC leaders ask Southern Baptists to support the work financially without adequately telling the story of the changed lives that money enables.

He wants Southern Baptist words to be backed up by action. "We are clearly against abortion," he said, but "what are we doing to make a statement to those who choose to keep those babies" by providing help, counseling and care.

He said "facts are our friends" and declining numbers more reflect pastors' personal lives and focus than anything else. "What we find important in our life as we lead people, our people find important," he said, echoing current President Frank Page's comments earlier that the problem with declining effectiveness is "me."

Hunt said he disagrees that the SBC is in "survival mode," but said the denomination ought to be doing more, noting that last year the convention baptized fewer people with a membership of 16 millions than the convention did in 1950 with six million members.

"We have a larger army," he said. "We ought to be taking more territory."

When asked if his election countered what some thought might have begun a trend away from mega-church pastors as president with Frank Page's election in 2006, Hunt said, "I can only hope I can be as good a Christian gentleman in public and private as Frank Page is."

Hunt was an original signer of the Southern Baptist Declaration on the Environment and Climate Change, despite taking significant heat. He is not rabid about the issue because there is so much conflicting information, but he said, "Every Christian ought to be gravely concerned about keeping the environment as clean as it can be."

Asked about several issues with the potential to divide Southern Baptists, Hunt said, "my heart as president would be more in the context of holding high the flags of what really represent Southern Baptists, that we are people of the book, in one of the most mission minded denominations in the world who are committed to church planting."

Even though he is pastor of a church with 16,000 members, Hunt said he does not consider himself "a large church pastor."

"Nobody in this room is more shocked than I am that I pastor a large church," he said. "I only wanted to reach all the people I could."

Members of Hunt's church will be on mission in 37 nations this year. It is a church "committed to neighbors and nations."

He is not looking "to lead as president by consensus," he said. He wants to enlarge the scope of who serves "to broaden the multitude of counselors that lead to wisdom."

Hunt said everyone does not have to agree with him theologically. He said he hopes to show there is room "under the Southern Baptist umbrella" to those with the passion to take the gospel "down the street and around the world."

"Maybe God's gotten Southern Baptists' attention that we'd better join hands and do what (God's called us) to do in the time we have."

Kentucky pastor Bill Henard won the SBCÕs first vice presidency in a landslide. He defeated two challengers, receiving 1,748 votesÑor 73.23 percent of 2,387 ballots.

Henard is pastor of Porter Memorial Baptist Church in Lexington, Ky., president of the Kentucky Baptist Convention and chairman of the board of the SBCÕs LifeWay Christian Resources.

He defeated John Connell, pastor of Calvary Baptist Church in Savannah, Ga., who received 377 votes (15.79 percent) and Crist Camden, pastor of Oconee Heights Baptist Church in Athens, Ga., who got 224 votes (9.38 percent).

The initial vote for the SBCÕs second vice president resulted in a tie.

John Newland, pastor of Fall Creek Baptist Church in Indianapolis, and Doug Mulkey, pastor of Mount Zion Baptist Church in Canton, Ga., both received 769 votes, or 30.24 percent each. A dead tie is unprecedented in SBC history, convention President Frank Page said.

The first ballot for second vice president eliminated two other nominees. Brian Fossett, an evangelist from Dalton, Ga., got 582 votes (28.89 percent), and Jim Hamilton, executive director of the Dakota Baptist Convention, garnered 381 votes (14.98 percent).

In the runoff, Newland received 470 votes (58.24 percent), defeating Mulkey, who garnered 332 votes (41.3 percent).

The SBCÕs two secretaries won re-election without opposition.

They are Recording Secretary John Yeats, public relations director for the Louisiana Baptist Convention and member of Ridge Avenue Baptist Church in West Monroe, and Registration Secretary Jim Wells, director of missions for Tri-County Baptist Association in southwest Missouri and a member of Hopedale Baptist Church in Ozark.