Southern Baptists will gather for their annual mid-June meeting in Phoenix next week, focusing on a new strategy for spiritual renewal of their faith and their families.
Although the actual business meetings will be held June 17-18 at Phoenix Civic Plaza, leaders hope the "Kingdom Family Rally" scheduled on the eve of the meeting will be the highlight of their gathering.
The rally on June 16 fits into a larger emphasis called "Empowering Kingdom Growth" that has taken shape in the last two years among leaders of the nation's largest Protestant denomination.
"It is a refocusing on the spiritual emphasis relative to the lordship of Christ over all we are and all we do," said Bill Merrell, spokesman for the Executive Committee of the Southern Baptist Convention, in an interview.
If the campaign is eventually successful, he said, Southern Baptists will reprioritize how they plan their budgets, schedule their calendars and deal with the mechanics of congregational and denominational life.
"It is a goal and a desire, basically, to seek first the King and his kingdom," Merrell said.
Even as messengers, or delegates, discuss renewal and hear "Kingdom Challenge" messages from prominent Southern Baptist speakers, they will deal with the nitty-gritty business of budgeting amid the current economic challenges in America.
The International Mission Board recently announced that its annual offering for foreign missions fell short of its $125 million goal by almost $10 million.
"There are so many people who are making themselves available for missionary service and, frankly, the likelihood is that they will be outstripping our resources," Merrell said.
In fact, the mission board announced Tuesday (June 10) that 61 support and management positions would be eliminated to keep the agency's expenditures for 2003 consistent with the income it anticipates.
Mission board officials, who still saw increased giving from Southern Baptists over the previous year, attribute the financial trouble to a quickly growing missionary force and reduction of investment income due to the stock market's downturn.
The mission board already has cancelled some conferences and reduced staff travel.
At the same gathering where the mission board will report on its budget-crunching steps, Southern Baptists will be asked to put a final seal of approval on plans for new global outreach.
The Executive Committee is recommending redirecting $125,000 from its $425,000 annual allotment to the Baptist World Alliance for a "Kingdom Relationships" initiative that would build relations with "other like-minded Christian bodies" worldwide. The alliance is considering a request for membership from the Cooperative Baptist Fellowship, a moderate group that formed to counter the conservative direction of the 16.2-million-member denomination.
Wendy Ryan, a spokeswoman for the alliance, said the reduction in funding is expected.
"I think the Baptist World Alliance has accepted that fact," she said.
"We still very much want the Southern Baptist Convention to be a part of the Baptist World Alliance and we just will have to see how this whole thing moves out."
Southern Baptists also are likely to re-elect Jack Graham, a Dallas-area pastor, to a second one-year term as president.
Merrell estimated that between 7,500 to 10,000 will attend the annual meeting, voicing lower projections than might be anticipated if it were held in the denomination's Southern strongholds.
For the fourth year in a row, protesters from Soulforce, an interdenominational pro-gay group, intend to continue their criticism of Southern Baptists' official stance opposing homosexuality, which the denomination's faith statement lists as an example of "sexual immorality."
Last year, dozens of protesters were arrested for disrupting the gathering in St. Louis. Merrell said security preparations have been "pretty significant," in part because of the "presence of demonstrators who wish to disrupt" the gathering.
