Southern Baptists begin arriving in California for annual meeting

ANAHEIM, Calif. – The strength of the Southern Baptist Convention lies with small churches where Christians serve without fanfare just because they want to please God.

So says Mark Clifton, the small-town preacher who serves as senior director of church replanting for the North American Mission Board in a sermon delivered Sunday evening at the Southern Baptist Convention Pastors’ Conference, a precursor to a two-day annual meeting that begins on Tuesday in Anaheim.

“We have many times forgotten all those small, out-of-the-way places, places where God is still very much at work, places we may never hear about, places that are incredibly important,” Clifton said. “I believe with all of my heart that the real power, the real strength, the untapped resource in the Southern Baptist Convention isn’t so much the handful of the really large churches, but it’s the tens of thousands of smaller, normative-size churches in every community, every crossroads, every neighborhood.”

Thousands of Southern Baptists began arriving in Anaheim over the weekend in advance of the annual meeting, which is being overshadowed by scandal involving the SBC Executive Committee’s handling of sexual abuse complaints.

A seven-month probe by outside investigators from the secular firm Guidepost Solutions found sexual abuse survivors had been “met, time and time again, with resistance, stonewalling, and even outright hostility” from the Executive Committee.

SBC President Ed Litton has said the nearly 9,000 messengers who have preregistered to attend this year’s annual meeting at the Anaheim Convention Center will “address the scourge of sex abuse within our churches and entities.”

“As we do, I pray that our posture will reflect the heart of Christ,” he wrote in an op-ed published in Baptist Press, a news agency operated by the SBC’s Executive Committee.

Despite the sex abuse scandal, Southern Baptists spent the weekend helping Anaheim-area churches share the gospel in their communities through door-knocking campaigns, block parties, and camps for young athletes  to learn more about basketball, soccer, volleyball, even surfing.

In a message at the SBC Pastors’ Conference on Sunday, Vance Pitman, former pastor of Hope Church in Las Vegas who now is leading the North American Mission Board’s church planting efforts, called for Southern Baptists to be a praying people, like the Christians of the early church.

“We as Southern Baptists need to get back to the place where we know we need God and if God doesn’t show up we’re sunk,” Pitman said. “What if we got desperate, and, as Southern Baptists, we fell on our knees and we prayed until the building shook?”