Welch, in new role, sees CP at work overseas

Matt Jones/BP

Bobby Welch, SBC Executive Committee strategist for global evangelical relations, met with Baptist leaders in several countries during a recent trip to discuss ways Southern Baptists can partner with believers worldwide in delivering the Gospel. Here, he talks in Bonn, Germany, to Heinrich Derksen, president of the Bible Seminary of Bonn.

NASHVILLE, Tenn. (BP) — Bobby Welch, during a recent overseas trip as SBC Executive Committee strategist for global evangelical relations, said his heart was moved to see how Southern Baptists are connected through the Cooperative Program to what God is doing around the world.

“At [a regional IMB workers meeting], I sat there and watched them all crowd into one home, deeply imbedded right in the middle of a community in that country, and watched the joy they had and saw them with their little babies and some of them were expectant mothers and others had teenage kids,” Welch said.

“I looked at them and I thought about the fact that all these people are here and they’re doing such a wonderful and powerful work .... ”

Welch, a former SBC president and former pastor of First Baptist Church in Daytona Beach, Fla., was named to the position of strategist for global evangelical relations in March as Southern Baptists’ ambassador to leaders in other countries who are interested in building relationships with likeminded believers.

Also on the trip – to Australia, the Philippines, Kazakhstan, and Germany Sept. 20 through Oct. 7 – Welch met with one Baptist leader whose words continue to grip him.

“He looked at me and said, ‘You have come here, and the Southern Baptist Convention that you’re representing just this day has brought great encouragement and hope to me that I’m taking back to my people – by just being here on the ground, meeting with us,’” Welch recounted.

The 18-day trip solidified in Welch’s mind “the power of the punch of the Cooperative Program,” he said.

“And I thought, ‘More, more – so many overwhelming, powerful, appealing ways for us to do more overseas as well as here.’