English
Korean
Spanish
CORPUS CHRISTI?Newly elected SBC entity leaders Kevin Ezell and Frank Page will be among those addressing messengers and guests from Southern Baptists of Texas Convention churches Nov. 14-16 in Corpus Christi for the 2010 SBTC Bible Conference and Annual Meeting.
With a focus on 2 Chronicles 7:14’s admonition to humbly seek God’s face and a theme of “Praying and Listening,” the convention will culminate at 7 p.m. on Tuesday night, Nov. 16 in what is being dubbed a “Commissioning Celebration” featuring a sermon by Ezell, the North American Mission Board president, and the commissioning of dozens of new missionaries charged with making disciples in the United States and Canada. More than 5,300 NAMB missionaries serve in 42 states and Canada.
Page will address the convention during his Executive Committee report around 2:55 p.m. on Nov. 16 (Tuesday).
SBTC Executive Director Jim Richards said it is fitting that the convention business sessions will end with sending out workers into the Lord’s harvest.
“Seeing those who are willing to go anywhere to tell anyone about Jesus challenges me to be a better witness,” wrote Richards in his TEXAN column encouraging attendance at the meeting and commissioning service (see page 5). “The stories of the missionaries will raise the expectations in our own lives. When we leave Corpus Christi, God wants us to have a deeper passion for those who need Christ.”
KEVIN EZELL
Ezell, 48, was elected to lead NAMB in September. He comes to the SBC’s domestic mission agency after 14 years as pastor of Highview Baptist Church in Louisville, Ky., a 6,000-member church with a history of planting churches.
Ezell emphasized church planting in his first meeting with the NAMB staff following his election.
“Today, we’ve got the potential of entering a golden age of church planting. The GCR (Great Commission Resurgence) and Southern Baptists made it very clear that they want us to be about church planting,” Ezell said, according to a Baptist Press story.
At NAMB’s fall meeting in Los Angeles, Ezell told trustees NAMB must set aside what is good in order to pursue what is great, adding that a 25 percent staff cutback is necessary, according to a story by Joe Westbury posted on the website of The Christian Index.
“NAMB has the primary task to assist churches, not to employ people. Therefore we have to very objectively evaluate [differentiate] what is good from what is great. We cannot sacrifice what is great so we can do many things that are average-to-good [on a scale],” Ezell said, according to the Index. A NAMB audit will help parse those things, he said.
“What I do know is that not all NAMB staff will need to be fulltime and based in Alpharetta. We will decentralize but new positions will not necessarily be fulltime staff. We will use pastors and others who are doing a wonderful job where they are but can advise us in our efforts. We are now living in 2010; [due to technology] you do not have to have everyone [living] in Alpharetta in order to work together.
Ezell said the agency’s focus will be mobilizing Southern Baptists for evangelism that results in church planting, adding that church planting is the most effective evangelism strategy.
He said he expects NAMB to partner with associations and state conventions “to mobilize them even greater than in the past” and believes NAMB and the states can “be friends” despite phasing out old funding agreements.
FRANK PAGE
Page, who served as SBC president from June 2006 to June 2008, was elected president of the SBC Executive Committee in June and assumed his role on Oct. 1 at the retirement of Morris H. Chapman.
The North Carolina native was pastor of First Baptist Church of Taylors, S.C., from 2001-2008, leaving there to head evangelism briefly at the North American Mission Board.
A champion of the SBC’s shared missions funding strategy known as the Cooperative Program, which he prioritized as a pastor at Taylors when his church designated more than 13 percent of its undesignated offerings for CP missions, Page is also a vocal advocate for personal witnessing.
He told EC staffers upon taking office, “Just know that I expect all of us to share Christ. You know what I’m talking about?in our normal traffic patterns of life.”
He has said his goal as EC president will be building a “covenant of trust” in the SBC.
“… I am trying to build relationships and trying to establish a covenant of trust to say, ‘Our old ship is in trouble. But with relationships and the power of the Lord, we can turn it around,” Page told the EC staff.
“Without relationships, we’re sunk.”
CONVENTION PROCEEDINGS
During the annual meeting, messages will be delivered by Terry Turner, pastor of Mesquite Friendship Baptist Church in Mesquite; Josh Smith, pastor of MacArthur Boulevard Baptist Church in Irving; Loui Canchola, pastor of Cornerstone Church in McAllen; and Mike Eklund, pastor of First Baptist Church of McAllen.
SBTC President Byron McWilliams, pastor of First Baptist Church of Odessa, will bring his address at 8:10 p.m. on Monday.
Jimmy Pritchard, pastor of First Baptist Church of Forney, will preach the Convention Sermon at 11:05 a.m. on Tuesday.
SBTC Executive Director Jim Richards will bring his report at 3:40 p.m. on Tuesday.
Scheduled times of prayer related to the “Praying and Listening” theme are included in the program several times each day.
All Bible conference and annual meeting events will be in the American Bank Center, 1901 N. Shoreline Dr., in Corpus Christi.
