2017 SBC Annual Meeting

PHOENIX (BP) -- Baptist Press is live blogging the SBC annual meeting in Phoenix. Updates can be read here, at our Twitter account, or our Facebook account. Want more updates? Follow our SBC annual meeting feed at Twitter.com/SBCMeeting.

PHOENIX (BP) -- It started Friday, June 9 -- the rumblings of an awakening. More than 700 voices worshiped at North Phoenix Baptist Church in Phoenix, Ariz., kicking off the weekend's Crossover Arizona and Harvest America events. The North American Mission Board's (NAMB) Crossover Arizona and Greg Laurie's Harvest America joined forces to host a three-day evangelistic outreach involving training, street evangelism and service projects before culminating in Harvest America's Sunday night crusade.

Encouraging and edifying pastors via the preaching of expository messages from the book of Philippians, the 2017 Southern Baptist Convention Pastors' Conference kicked off Sunday (June 11) at the Phoenix Convention Center.

PHOENIX (BP) -- Around 250 Southern Baptists gathered for the opening session of WMU's 2017 Missions Celebration and Annual Meeting on June 11 in Phoenix. "Every moment has a series of defining moments -- moments that shape us and change and make us the person we are today," Sandy Wisdom-Martin, newly-elected national WMU executive director said. She and Linda Cooper, national WMU president, opened the evening and shared personal and biblical "Defining Moments," in keeping with WMU's theme for the year. The focus for the opening night was "Redeemed."

PHOENIX (BP) -- Having worked with each of this year's Pastors' Conference speakers earlier this spring on their preaching through the book of Philippians, David Allen noted text-driven preaching is expository preaching "as it should be done." Allen, dean of the School of Preaching at Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary, led the Text-Driven Preaching Workshop Sunday (June 11) as the official pre-conference workshop of the Southern Baptist Convention's annual Pastor's Conference in Phoenix.

PHOENIX, Ariz. (BP) -- Becky Sumrall, a Tennessee Baptist who has spent the past 40 years mentoring women from all walks of life, is the recipient of this year's Dellanna West O'Brien Award for Women's Leadership Development. The award, presented annually by Woman's Missionary Union since 1998, comes with a $2,500 grant from WMU Foundation that will go to further Sumrall's ministry at Begin Anew, Middle Tennessee's branch of Christian Women's Job Corps and Christian Men's Job Corps.

Prayer and perseverance were the themes as Southern Baptist Convention President Steve Gaines and SBC executive Frank Page preached at Phoenix area churches June 11 ahead of the 2017 SBC annual meeting.

NASHVILLE (BP) -- Thirty years after the Southern Baptist Convention Peace Committee delivered its major report to the convention, Baptists hold a range of views on the committee's significance. Some claim it played a positive role in advancing the SBC's Conservative Resurgence. Others say it helped calm the denominational conflict. Still others have called it a public relations scheme to appease moderates while theological conservatives solidified their control of the convention's committees and boards.

Phil Baker brings a witness to loading dock workers in each city where the SBC holds its annual meetings.

Rod Martin: "At the SBC annual meeting, we take part in the body of Christ at a whole new, vital and defining level."