“Everyone waits in line.” This is a common saying at the annual summer meeting of Southern Baptists.
Every messenger from a local church, every guest, seminary president, and entity head walks the same zig-zagging line to receive their credentials. It’s a bit like saying, “The ground is level at the foot of the cross.” There is only one way in and those working the tables have no partiality.
Drew Heironimus, Information and Technology Services Director for the Illinois Baptist State Association (IBSA), could be found standing behind the registration tables Monday morning. Invited by the Executive Committee to fill an open slot on the volunteer team about eight years ago, he is now a fixture to messengers checking in every year.
Heironimus is part of a team made up of volunteers from IT staff from several state conventions who know the SBC information system well. They are tasked with checking in the thousands of messengers and guests who come to each SBC annual meeting.
“A lot of my counterparts all do this. Kentucky, Florida, Georgia, [state convention staff] all do this.” But it is a crew of younger faces manning the front lines at the tables.
“Every [hosting] state convention usually tries to recruit college kids” Heironimus said. “So all these kids are college kids here in Louisiana. Some are from LSU. Some are from Baton Rouge. They’re from all over the place. So they come and volunteer and help out. It’s kind of their summer BCM [Baptist Campus Ministries] project.”
This year, Heironimus’s daughter, Marissa, a rising senior at New Berlin High School, decided to be one of those smiling young faces greeting messengers at the registration desk. They made the 12-hour drive from Springfield together, arriving early to stuff bags and set up computers and printers.
This is Marissa’s first convention, she was nervous about the experience. “I thought I was going to be the only one working, and then everyone’s going be yelling at me, like, you need to hurry up. But, you know, it’s actually kind of cool, you know, meeting new people coming in.”
Over 9,000 messengers checked in by early Monday afternoon. With so many people in line they might expect to wait an hour or more. But the team of students and state staffers has the system down to a science.
“We’ve got 20 stations, and so we’ve got 20 computers going, plus the extra kids to keep things stacked, get name badges out, and keep [supplies] piled up so they don’t run out,” Heironimus said. “It moves fast. We timed it, and if you start at the beginning of line, it’s less than 15 minutes.”
At peak crowds he says they can check in about 1,000 messengers per hour.
But it’s not the efficiency or the work that the father and daughter enjoy so much. Both said relationships are the best part.
“You see so many people, you make relationships and to me that’s what it’s all about, making relationships and meeting other people,” he said. “It’s just kind of neat to see other [people] come in and you know who they are.”
Including some from the IBSA family.
“The cool thing was Marissa registered Nate [Adams] and his wife. You know, there’s no rhyme or reason whose line they get sent to, but Marissa was able to register and check them in. I thought that was kind of cool.”
— Ben Jones in New Orleans