SALT LAKE CITY, Utah — Utah-Idaho Southern Baptists celebrated their 60^th anniversary with root beer floats Oct. 25 during a break in their day-long annual meeting.

Coke floats and orange floats also were available “to celebrate God’s faithfulness throughout our history,” Executive Director Rob Lee told Baptist Press. “Everyone enjoyed a whole lot of fellowship together with the floats being an unexpected break snack.”

Executive Director Rob Lee provided an abbreviated history. 

Southern Baptist work started in Idaho on Christmas Day 1887 at Independence Flat — now Clearwater — Idaho, with J.B. York as pastor, and at Roosevelt, Utah, in 1944, with Harold Dillman as pastor. The state convention’s mission offering was named the “York Dillman Offering” in their honor.

“What’s been consistent over the last 60 years?” asked convention president and Idaho pastor Roger Naylor. “The Word of God. We’ve grown because from the beginning we’ve focused on the inspired, inerrant, infallible, everlasting Word of God.”

The 185 churches, missions and plants in Utah and Idaho to date have given $26 million of their undesignated offerings to missions through the Cooperative Program, and $6.1 million of that has left the states to fuel Southern Baptist missions globally.

“Last year, through CP and missions offerings, we passed on 50.4% of the gifts — $520,328 — in Cooperative Program, Annie Armstrong Easter Offering, Lottie Moon Christmas Offering, and hunger funds,” Lee reported. “We’ve baptized 44,579 people in our ACP (All Church Profile) history.”

Adam Groza, president of Gateway Seminary, was present to speak about theological education. Gateway’s precursor, Golden Gate Baptist Theological Seminary, which started in 1944, to date has graduated 12,000 students, Groza said. 

“We want to put educational opportunities where the churches are in the West,” the newly inaugurated president told his listeners. That’s why the Rocky Mountain campus of Gateway Seminary was started in 1996. Today the Rocky Mountain campus also includes the Salt Lake School of Theology and the Wyoming Southern Baptist Center for Leadership Development in Wyoming.

Jonathan Howe, the Southern Baptist Convention’s (SBC) vice president for convention administration, described the “force for good” that is the SBC.

“Our cooperative efforts have excelled and expanded for more than 175 years,” Howe said. “Southern Baptists operate the largest free program of religious instruction in the United States. 

“Because of the Cooperative Program and other gifts, we have the largest missions sending agency, largest domestic church planting movement, largest religious disaster relief force, largest seminary and largest seminary system in the United States, and likely the world,” Howe continued. 

“The depth and breadth of these organizations represent the cumulative impact of almost two centuries of cooperation,” Howe said. “So again, why do we cooperate? Because when Southern Baptists cooperate, Southern Baptists are a force for good.” 

Jackie Allen, NAMB’s western region Send director, told messengers Southern Baptists have planted more than 11,000 churches since 2010.

“We make it more difficult for people to die and go to hell,” Allen said. “Hell is real. People are broken and lost. And Jesus saves.

“If you’re not building trenches, why should God send the rain?” Allen said in talking about the need for church planters from the local area. “The best church planters 20 years from now will be coming from your churches” where they will have been discerned and nurtured by the pastors.

Allen later served as host for the Chick-fil-A lunch provided by the Send Network.

Videos and presentations from other SBC entities also aired. 

Business, heard by 104 messengers from 38 Utah and Idaho churches, plus 32 guests, consisted of electing officers, approving the budget and passing a gesture of appreciation to the host church.

Naylor, pastor of First Bonners Ferry in Bonner’s Ferry, Idaho, was reelected president. Dave Carver, pastor of Waters Edge Fellowship in Burley, Idaho, was reelected first vice president. Timothy O’Day, pastor of Christ Fellowship Church in American Fork, Utah, was reelected second vice president. Allen Featherstone, pastor of Mosaic Church in Provo, Utah, was reelected recording secretary.

Despite lower than anticipated income for the third year in a row, messengers approved a $1,539,960 budget for 2025, up from $1,518,344 last year. Next year’s budget includes up to $635,000 from NAMB, an anticipated $806,960 in CP giving from churches and $98,000 in giving to the York Dillman state missions offering.

The budget allotted $242,088 — 30% — of CP giving from churches to be forwarded to national and international SBC missions and ministry.

In other business, the UISBC Abuse Prevention Policy and Procedures, approved earlier this year by the Executive Board, received unanimous approval confirmation from the messengers.

“The annual meeting was filled with opportunities for all to network,” Lee said. “The business sessions focused on our mission of sharing Christ, starting churches and strengthening churches, and standing on the firm foundation of the Word of God for the next 60 years.”

The next annual meeting of the Utah Idaho Southern Baptist Convention is set for Oct. 24, 2025, at Central Valley Baptist Church in Meridian, Idaho. 

(EDITOR’S NOTE — Karen L. Willoughby is a national correspondent for Baptist Press.)