North Carolina Baptist pastor Daniel Dickard wants to be a unifier. You can see it in his vision for his church. You can read it in his recent book, Church Together.
You can also see it in his public statements about his candidacy for the presidency of the 2023 Southern Baptist Convention (SBC) Pastors’ Conference, which will be decided this month in Anaheim, Calif. Jordan Easley, senior pastor of First Baptist Church of Cleveland, Tenn., will nominate Dickard for the position.
“I want to pull people together because we are better together,” Dickard said. “It’s not just that churches are to come together, a convention is to come together under the truth of the inerrancy and sufficiency of scripture.
“We are a conservative convention that believes the Bible, preaches the Bible. And I believe that most people who are a part of our congregations desire to live out the Bible. I believe the Southern Baptist Convention is a family, and as a family we should look for every opportunity to bring more people together for a time of encouragement. That would be my goal for the pastors’ conference.”
Dickard has served as the pastor of Friendly Avenue Baptist Church in Greensboro since May 2018. Before serving at Friendly Avenue, he served in multiple roles at Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary (SWBTS), including dean of students, instructor of preaching and church-ministry relations.
Dickard graduated from North Greenville University before receiving his M.Div. and Ph.D. from SWBTS.
Dickard describes Friendly Avenue as a missions-sending, gospel-centered Southern Baptist church that has been active in planting churches among other language groups in the community. In the past few decades, the church has started Arabic, Karenic (a dialect in Myanmar) and Cambodian congregations. They also have a partnership with a Hispanic congregation. Many of the second generation of these international congregations have begun attending Friendly Avenue.
“So, we truly are becoming a multiethnic congregation because of our church’s commitment to international church planting here in the Triad region,” Dickard said.
Dickard would like to make the conference a two-day event and add additional breakout tracks applicable to all Southern Baptists, including women, youth, college students and those who are pursuing a ministry call.
Dickard also notes that the church has started a house church planting network led by a former associate pastor who was also an International Mission Board (IMB) missionary.
“Friendly Avenue has a long history for loving Southern Baptists and the mission of the Southern Baptist Convention. But the church also has a willingness to think outside the box in order to make disciples here in Greensboro and beyond,” Dickard said.
Having pastored in the state since 2018, Dickard recognizes a strong commitment to cooperation in North Carolina Baptist churches. He says he has particularly appreciated the convention’s “Pockets of Lostness” effort to mobilize churches to engage neighborhoods across the state that need a gospel witness, along with other initiatives to mobilize churches to bless their communities.
“I’ve been impressed with North Carolina Baptists, that reaching others is more important than entertaining ourselves,” Dickard said. “North Carolina Baptists truly have a heart to reach North Carolina, to further the gospel and go to the nations.”
Friendly Avenue Baptist gives 11% of undesignated receipts to missions through the Cooperative Program.
Dickard says he had no ambition to run for the SBC Pastors’ Conference president until a group of pastors came to him and asked him to consider allowing his name to be nominated.
“After a time of prayer, I let a group of pastors know that I would, and that if elected it would be an honor to serve Southern Baptists because I love Southern Baptists,” Dickard said. “I’ve grown up in a Southern Baptist house, been in Southern Baptist churches and I am a Southern Baptist pastor. I love what our denomination stands for—our commitment to evangelism and missions—but also the emphasis on the primacy of preaching. If I could be of any help to a denomination that I love, I would be honored to serve in this capacity.”
Dickard says, if elected, the 2023 conference will focus on “Character matters in ministry: Beatitudes of a pastor from Matthew 5:3-12.” He says he would work with the speaker selection council to determine the pastors who would preach at the conference.
“It is my belief that the pastors’ conference should be a unifying event in which all Southern Baptists have confidence in the selected speakers,” Dickard said. “Each pastor that I will select to serve on the speaker selection council will have a love for the Southern Baptist Convention and unwavering fidelity to the scriptures, and a strong commitment to biblical expositional preaching.”
Dickard added that he would seek to include pastors of a diverse selection of Southern Baptist churches, including congregations of all sizes and demographics.
Dickard would also like to make the conference a two-day event and add additional breakout tracks that will make it applicable to all Southern Baptists. Some of those tracks would include one for women, youth, college students and one for those who are pursuing a ministry call.
Published in March, Dickard’s new book, Church Together, picks up on some themes he describes in his hopes for the pastor’s conference. The book focuses on the threat of individualism that is hurting the witness of churches today. It provides pastors, church leaders and church members with a working plan to overcome individualism in the life of their church.
(EDITOR’S NOTE – Tobin Perry is a freelance writer with more than 20 years of writing experience with Southern Baptist organizations. He can be reached at TobinPerry.com.)
