SBC president calls for 'return to first love,' Great Commission and ethnic diversity

Southern Baptist Convention President Bryant Wright challenged "Southern Baptist Christians and churches to return to their first love of Jesus" and to "become much more passionate about the Great Commission."

He also called for a historic Lottie Moon Christmas Offering, more ethnic diversity among SBC leadership and a "radical reprioritization of our denominational mission funds beginning with the Cooperative Program."

Wright?pastor of Johnson Ferry Baptist Church in Marietta, Ga.?delivered his remarks after a dinner hosted for pastors and laymen at the SBTC's offices in Grapevine on Nov. 2.

Such challenges are needed, Wright said, because "culture has influenced the church more than we have been a transforming agent for culture."

One such influence is materialism, which "is the number one idol in the church," Wright said. "The majority of our church members rob God every single week. It's a testimony that we love money more than we love Jesus."

"Hedonism, workaholism, technology obsession?all these kinds of things can take the place of that relationship with Jesus. So wherever I go, I want to challenge Southern Baptist Christians to return to their first love of Jesus. Nothing is more important than that," he said, adding that love for Jesus engenders "a greater love for the lost."

Regarding non-believers, Wright said they're created in God's image and "have gone astray just like all of us have gone astray. But we want to be in the business of pointing them to Jesus. If we have that spirit of Jesus, we're going to have a passionate desire to see lost people reached."

"I hope Southern Baptists become much more passionate about the Great Commission than we have ever been in all of our history," he added. "We are at our best when the Great Commission is front and center of what God wants us to do."

Saying the SBC has "gotten sidetracked" regarding the Great Commission, Wright believes that part of getting back on track includes "a radical reprioritization of our denominational mission funds beginning with the Cooperative Program."

Wright lauded the SBTC for sending more CP funds out of state than are kept. The current CP split for the SBTC is 55 percent for national and international SBC ministries and 45 percent for in-state ministry.

"That's an incredible model. I'd love to see it happening in every state," Wright said.

Members at Johnson Ferry changed their CP giving plan, Wright said, when they discovered that only 16 cents of every dollar the church gave through its state convention CP plan made it to the international mission field.

Wright said church members "wanted the majority of our Southern Baptist mission dollars winding up on the international mission field. That's just a passion we have."

The church gives 5 percent directly through the International Mission Board's Lottie Moon Christmas Offering and 5 percent through the CP "because we still want to support state missions and the seminaries and home missions. But we wanted most of our funds to go to international missions."

"We'd much rather give the full 10 percent through CP?much rather. But there needs to be a radical change in priorities in how we do our missions giving," Wright said. "And [the SBTC] is certainly a great model in that regard."

Asking pastors to challenge their churches "to have the largest Lottie Moon offering in the history of the church," Wright implored his listeners to "do something that is God-sized."

Noting that members of Johnson Ferry have completed numerous mission trips, Wright said, "It's really on my heart that every church go on at least one mission trip each year.... There's no way I could overestimate the spiritual impact mission trips have had on the life of Johnson Ferry."

During a question-and-answer session, Wright responded to a question regarding how to reprioritize CP giving, saying that many state leaders have asked, "'What do you want us to cut?' And the answer to that is very simple: 'That is n