The speakers at the Southern Baptist Pastors Conference may not have been as recognizable or as quotable as the usual big-church preachers at this event, but the 12 average-church pastors on the bill made up for it by being relevant to smaller church ministry and relatable to their peers in the chairs.
Overall, the downsized event was deemed a success by organizers and attenders. “No smoke. No show. No mood setting. Only a man and his Bible,” tweeted Mike Wilbanks of Mississippi. (And a Celtic-style band led by “In Christ Alone” composers Keith and Kristyn Getty.)
Iowa pastor and blogger Dave Miller ran for conference president last year on an “average-church” platform. He promised to bring speakers from regular-size churches. He also planned to focus on a single book of the Bible, with the preachers taking successive passages, rather than letting speakers take their best shot at a theme.
The book was Philippians. Two pastors from Illinois were invited to preach.
Chicago pastor and church planter David Choi opened the conference with a challenge to his colleagues: don’t rely on yourself or your own accomplishments, rely on Christ. His sermon from Philippians 1:1-11 focused on the Christian’s identity.
Choi encouraged pastors in their spiritual walk, telling stories from his own. “You don’t want to be defined by your performance; that well leads to destruction,” the planter of Church of the Beloved in Chicago’s University District said, sharing his one-time reliance on personal achievement. Neither does failure identify the believer. “Pastor, your past does not define you. Christ’s past defines us… It has nothing to do with you, everything to do with Christ. Rest in your gospel identity.”
Uptown Baptist Church Pastor Michael Allen was the other preacher from Illinois. “There is an obsession these days with leadership and not followership,” he said. “Yet, there are at least twice as many scriptural references to followership than there are to leadership.”
Preaching from Philippians 3:17–4:1, Allen pointed to two imperatives to followership: Paul exhorts the people to become like him as he follows Christ. And Paul says to pay attention to other saints who are already living examples.
“Paul is not talking about a program for your church,” Allen said. “He’s talking about following godly people. It’s not about borrowing a sermon or a song you got at a conference but by being influenced by those who are worthy of being imitated.”
Charles elected
Jacksonville, Fla., pastor H.B. Charles was elected president of the 2018 SBC Pastors Conference, becoming the first African American to hold the post.
Charles was nominated by Lutz, Fla. pastor Ken Whitten, who said, “I want to be real clear about one thing—I am not nominating H.B. Charles because of the color of his skin. I’m suggesting that he be the conference president because of the character of his soul and the convictions of his spirit.”
Whitten shared about Charles’ pastoral ministry experience and commitments to the inerrancy of Scripture and expositional preaching, adding, “All of this has given H.B. a vision of what every Southern Baptist pulpit can look like, when we make Jesus Christ the central figure of our preaching and the cross the central factor of our preaching.”
Charles’ remarkable expository preaching became known to many Illinoisans at the 2016 IBSA Pastors Conference, where his skilled explanation and engaging delivery both held and moved his audience at Broadview Missionary Baptist Church.
As there were no other nominees, current conference president Dave Miller asked the crowd to vote by standing and cheering, and the entire auditorium erupted in applause.
Miller was pleased with the attendance, “blown away” as he tweeted from the platform with a photo of the audience. Miller opened the conference with thanks to all who made the event possible, without naming names for the sake of time. Some funds that usually would have funded the event were used to provide “scholarships” for pastors who would not have been able to attend—62 of the them at $1,000 each.
New Orleans Baptist Theological Seminary, with its new Caskey Center for Church Excellence specializing in smaller congregations, partnered with Miller to produce the event and covered much of the cost.