ORLANDO, Fla. — In a
surprise move, Southern Baptists said no to two well-known presidential
candidates and elected a church planter from Marietta, Ga., to lead them in the
coming year.
Bryant Wright, senior pastor
of Johnson Ferry Baptist Church in Marietta, Ga., beat Ted Traylor, pastor of
Olive Baptist Church in Pensacola, Fla., in a run-off ballot 4,225 to 3,371.
Bryant’s votes represented 55.11 percent of the 7,667 votes casts, while
Traylor’s represented 43.97 percent.
BP photo by Bill Bangham Bryant Wright |
Seventy-one votes, or .93 percent, were
disallowed.
Traylor and Jimmy Jackson,
senior pastor, Whitesburg Baptist Church, Huntsville, Ala., entered the race as
the frontrunners, particularly in what many labeled a pro/con Great Commission
Resurgence report presidential race.
Traylor served on the task force. Jackson
was outspoken against the task force’s report that was approved by convention
messengers just minutes before the presidential election results were
announced.
Wright and Traylor garnered
a combined 66.02 percent of the original vote against Jackson and Leo Endel,
executive director, Minnesota-Wisconsin Baptist Convention.
In the original vote, Wright
received 3,433 votes, or 36.84 percent of the vote, while Traylor received
2,719 votes, or 29.18 percent of the vote. Jackson received 2,482 votes, or
26.64 percent of the vote, and Endel received 589 votes, or 6.23 percent of the
vote.
Of the registered 10,873
messengers at the time of the vote, 9,318 messengers cast ballots. Of those, 95
ballots, or 1.2 percent, were disallowed.
In nominating Wright, David
Uth, pastor of First Baptist Church, Orlando, Fla., said, “He’s not been on a
lot of programs and you may not know his name,” Uth said. “He wasn’t waiting on
a resurgence or a vote of a convention. He has been quietly leading his church …
and doing the Great Commission.”
Wright started Johnson Ferry
28 years ago and has been the church’s only pastor. The church routinely leads
Southern Baptist churches in giving to the Lottie Moon Christmas Offering for
International Missions and has a strong missions emphasis inside the church.
The church plans to give 3.5
percent of its undesignated receipts — more than $600,000 to the Cooperative
Program.
Regarding the relatively low percentage to the SBC’s unified budget,
Wright said because his congregation is so missions-minded, key leaders of the
church questioned why so much of the Cooperative Program stays in the United
States.
“We had a stewardship issue
and had to make a decision,” Wright said during a news conference following his
election June 15. “We wanted the majority of the money to wind up on the
missions field where the witness for Christ is not as prevalent” as in the
United States.
Uth noted that Wright is
among a new generation of pastors who are less interested in the status quo and
are asking why more of the money given through the Cooperative Program isn’t
going to reach those who have little or no access to gospel.
“I don’t plan to encourage
churches to bypass CP,” Wright said. “I do think we need to reprioritize the CP
as far as where the funding goes. … More people would be more passionate about
the CP if that would happen.”
Wright acknowledged the
autonomy of the state conventions, but he also noted, “I would encourage state
conventions to move … (toward a) 50–50 (split of CP dollars). We could do such
a greater work.
“I feel there will need to
be more funding for NAMB (North American Mission Board) and the seminaries.
They are vastly underfunded,” he said.
“We are at a crossroads. …
Some major changes are going to have to occur,” Wright said. “I would like to
see all kinds of practical implementations that will have to occur in moving
the convention in the direction it is going to have to go (during my year as
president). A lot will have to be done.”
Wright said his priorities
as president will revolve around reprioritizing the funding structure of the
Cooperative Program, fulfilling the Great Commission, encouraging every church —
and particularly every pastor — to experience a missions trip and urging
Southern Baptists to “return to our first love for Christ.”
In the first vice president’s
race, Ron Herrod, president of the Conference of Southern Baptist Evangelists,
was elected 1,653 to 1,117 over Jim Drake, pastor of Brush Fork Baptist Church
in Bluefield, W. Va.
Eric Moffett, pastor of
First Baptist Church, Sparkman, Ark., was elected second vice president 706 to
689 over Jim Goforth, pastor of New Life Baptist Church, Forsyth, Mo. Moffett
and Goforth received 66.69 percent of the vote in the first ballot of four
candidates.
In the first vote, Moffett
received 436 votes while Goforth received 423 votes. Ray Newman, ethics and
religious affairs specialist for the Georgia Baptist Convention, received 245
votes, and John Copeland, pastor of First Baptist Church, Fulton, Ala., received
171 votes.
Two officers were re-elected
— John L. Yeats, director of communication for the Louisiana Baptist
Convention, as recording secretary and Jim Wills, director of missions of Tri
County Baptist Association in Missouri, as registration secretary.