[1]FORT WORTH, Texas (BP) — Members of the Southern Baptist Convention’s evangelism task force met Dec. 5 to each share recommendations that will be considered for a final report to the SBC’s 2018 annual meeting in Dallas.
The task force gathered on the campus of Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary for the second of three scheduled meetings. SBC President Steve Gaines appointed the task force during the SBC annual meeting in June to focus on how Southern Baptists might be more effective in personal soul winning and evangelistic preaching.
Paige Patterson, president of Southwestern Seminary and chairman of the task force, referred to the latest meeting as “simply remarkable.” “Members representing various theological perspectives, multiple age groups, and every geographical section of America came together with harmony seldom exhibited anywhere in the common cause of reaching men and women for Christ,” he said. “Watching these men work evoked the strongest hope I have had for the future of Southern Baptists.”
Having utilized their first meeting in August to study evangelism and prayerfully seek the will the God, the team used their second meeting to begin formulating recommendations that will eventually be compiled and revised into their report to the convention. See related report [2].
Following the group’s first meeting, Patterson said he hoped they would help “harness the energies of our churches for an assault on the kingdom of Satan and guide us in the witness of Southern Baptists to a fallen world.”
In addition to Patterson and Gaines, those in attendance at the second meeting were executive director of the Southern Baptists of Texas Convention Jim Richards; pastors Jordan Easley, Nick Floyd, J.D. Greear, Doug Munton and Jimmy Scroggins; Midwestern Seminary professor Robert Matz; New Orleans Seminary professor Preston Nix; Southeastern Seminary professors Alvin Reid and Jim Shaddix; Southern Seminary professor Adam Greenway; and Southwestern Seminary professors David Allen and Matt Queen.
[3]Southwestern’s Chair of Evangelism Matt Queen noted his optimism following the meeting.
“We spent time in concerted prayer,” Queen said, “and I believe God, out of that time of prayer, through His Holy Spirit, directed us in such a way that we can bring a report to the convention that will be accepted and help us reclaim our heritage as an evangelistic denomination.”