CHARLOTTE, N.C. (BP) — It’s 6:45 a.m., and Clint Pressley is already getting loud in the shed.

The correct nomenclature is, actually, The Shed. It’s a modest structure behind his home wall-to-wall with barbells, weights and racks collected over years, anywhere from garage sales to Facebook Marketplace. A few other guys — including area pastors — meet Pressley there three times a week and lift for an hour. 

There is challenging, but also laughter, before everyone’s day starts. Testosterone levels are about where you would expect.

No gloves are allowed. A single, small heater is all that pushes back temperatures in the 30s on a recent morning. Pressley’s 2-year-old Rottweiler, Roman, lumbers around the room batting a 2-lb. bocce ball as a toy.

Joining Pressley are Eric Little and Mark Jones, members of Hickory Grove Baptist Church; Drew Edmonston, the youngest of the group at 27 and pastor of Anderson Grove Baptist in Albemarle; Jeremy Hood, pastor of First Baptist Matthews; and a Baptist Press reporter wondering if this was a good idea after all.

Building ministry experience

For a muscle to grow, there must be a breakdown in the fibers, small tears, if you will. The body notes the damage and reinforces those fibers, making them larger and stronger. “No pain, no gain” isn’t just a slogan.

Pressley, senior pastor of Hickory Grove Baptist Church and Southern Baptist Convention (SBC) president, has experienced this in his 34 years of ministry.

He joined Hickory Grove as a teenager after he got saved. A call to vocational ministry took him to Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary. While in Fort Worth he met a masters of divinity student named Connie and married her.

Leading churches in southern Mississippi allowed Pressley to finish his master’s degree at New Orleans Baptist Theological Seminary. He then went to Hickory Grove as the singles pastor before going to Dauphin Way Baptist Church in Mobile, Ala., as pastor. In 2010, Hickory Grove extended a call again — this time to serve as senior pastor.

One would think Pressley’s return to a familiar setting with years of ministry experience would spark an overwhelmingly warm welcome. That wasn’t entirely the case.

“The first five years, I was preaching five times every Sunday morning,” Pressley said. “I was also the head of the school. Staff was transitioning in and out. When you lead change, people don’t love it. I was new [in that role].”

All those factors brought a consistent level of discouragement, with one barb standing out.

“One time during Pastor Appreciation Month in October I got a card,” he said. “On the outside it said, ‘Thank you.’ I opened it and it said ‘… for ruining our church.’”

A gospel focus

There were tears in the fabric. They healed, though, and became something stronger.

“My desire was to see the church move from being attractional (attracting through events) to missional. We took the same approach to our school, which has about 800 students now. There was a gospel focus, but we also wanted to remove anything that kept us from being diverse,” he said. “Over the course of time, we achieved that where half of the students are not white.”

His love and drive for missions long preceded his becoming SBC president last June.

“We want to see as many as possible come out of our church and go into some sort of mission or ministry,” Pressley said. “We’re tied pretty close to the International Mission Board and keep a map showing the locations of all our missionaries.

“Hickory Grove takes 10 to 12 mission trips a year, so our people are really exposed to it. They develop a heart for missions and bring that passion back to our area.”

A second nomination

Pressley told Baptist Press he is officially announcing his willingness to be nominated for a second term as SBC president. His first has reassured his faith in the convention’s work.

“It’s been a really positive experience all the way through,” he said. “Going to the seminaries, you see the education students are getting. I’ve met our entity heads and been a part of the IMB commissioning service. All of it has been a good reminder that Southern Baptists are a really good movement in the evangelical world and do a great job. It’s an honor to be a part of that.”

The leaders, he added, “genuinely love what they do.”

“It’s a calling for them and refreshing for me, as a pastor, to see,” said Pressley. “And the seminary students, you see their burning desire for the gospel, to see people saved. They’re being trained for missions and to serve in our churches.

“Even though I’m visiting as SBC president, I kind of forget that and am looking at it all as a pastor. It’s good for your soul to see it. You get away from the negativity that’s online and see those being trained and prepared to do the work. Really strong things are happening.”

Pressley will lead the 2025 SBC annual meeting in Dallas, which will include times of special recognition for the 100^th anniversaries of the Baptist Faith and Message (BF&M) and the founding of the Cooperative Program.

“If the SBC is a train, it runs on the two rails of the Cooperative Program and our confession of faith,” Pressley said. “Both have played a large part in building my own identity as a Southern Baptist pastor.”

He called the BF&M a “concise explanation of the important doctrines that we are talking about” which has provided for “a fellowship of churches that have existed this long and have stayed conservative this long.”

Pressley believes the BF&M should be interpreted as “tightly” as possible.

A solid base for good work

Back to The Shed. There’s a time for curls and bench press, but not today. The sets focus on basics — standing barbell press, trap bar lift, leg press. Pressley and the others are seasoned enough to know the importance of leg day.

Those early days of ministry tested him, and it was a devotion to the basics that got him through.

“It was a crazy time. There was a whole lot going on with the school. We had two boys in middle school. But that’s where the disciplines are so important. You dig deep in your early morning time with the Lord. Get some good exercise. Read something like a biography or history to see how other leaders dealt with struggle,” Pressley said.

“You start to see the sovereignty of God. The Lord was kind to get us through all that, bringing more people to the church and like-minded people to the staff.”

He also believes God is sovereignly guiding the SBC, even with the number of ongoing discussions within the convention. His time as president has brought him into closer view of issues, such as ongoing lawsuits related to the 2022 report from Guidepost Solutions, based on its investigation into the SBC Executive Committee.

The recent hiring of Jeff Dalrymple to lead the Convention’s sexual abuse prevention and response office is a very positive move, he said.

“I’ve known Jeff for years. He’s a standup guy, humble and hardworking, clear-thinking, and has a good background he’ll bring to the table,” said Pressley. “He will bring a lot of strong discernment to help Southern Baptists and will do a great job.”

There are also the challenges of leading a church in a sharply divided political climate. Pressley’s church sits on the edge of Mecklenburg County, which solidly supported Kamala Harris in last fall’s election. Other surrounding counties were just as solidly Trump. 

“Expositional preaching helps,” he said on communicating Scripture. “The other is tenure. You have to be around where people know you and trust you.

“There will be issues that aren’t political, but are just born out of a worldview. We’re going to be pro-life and believe in two genders because that reflects God’s good creation. You can be accused of being political just because you’re trying to be faithful to the Bible.”

Just as negativity can be directed at those attempting to follow Scripture, it can also be directed at the SBC. Pressley encouraged others to be mindful of the good work Southern Baptists support every day.

“The truth of the matter is, we can miss the millions of dollars going to thousands of missionaries and church plants and other ministries we’re doing every single week,” he said. “You have 47,000 Baptist churches, all full of faithful Christians, contributing to that as pastors shepherd the people. 

“There are so many great things going on we just don’t talk about because they’re not ‘sensational,’ but they are. It’s what we actually do.”

(EDITOR’S NOTE — Scott Barkley is chief national correspondent for Baptist Press.)