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Greear to nominate Floyd for 2nd term


COLUMBUS, Ohio (BP) — Arkansas pastor Ronnie Floyd will be nominated for a second term as president of the Southern Baptist Convention, North Carolina pastor J.D. Greear announced today (April 20).

Floyd “is a leader God has raised up for us at this crucial hour, and sensing God’s hand upon him, I want to see him lead us for another year,” Greear, pastor of The Summit Church in Raleigh-Durham, N.C., wrote in a statement to Baptist Press announcing his intention to nominate Floyd at the June 16-17 SBC annual meeting in Columbus, Ohio.

Floyd, pastor of the multi-campus Cross Church in northwest Arkansas, has focused on calling the convention to pray for spiritual awakening and for advancing the Gospel globally during his first term as SBC president, while also championing the Cooperative Program, Southern Baptists’ unified method of funding missions and ministries internationally and in North America.

Greear stated four reasons he plans to nominate Floyd:

“Pastor Ronnie filled his first term with repeated calls to prayer. Every time I hear him speak, he lifts our eyes beyond what we can do to what only the Holy Spirit can do. He really believes a move of God is possible in our generation. And he makes me believe it — a true and essential message for every generation, but one especially pressing in our own,” Greear wrote.

“Second, Pastor Ronnie possesses the convictional graciousness we believe honors the Lord in our convention. I am amazed by the diversity of Baptists who call him friend and look to him as leader. He unifies Southern Baptists. He is clear on the Gospel and gracious in those matters of secondary importance.

“Third, Pastor Ronnie loves young leaders. My first memories of Pastor Ronnie are of him reaching out to me when I was a very young pastor, taking interest in me, speaking courage into me and vision over my life. Pastor Ronnie’s focus is not only on the achievements of our past, but the possibilities in our future.

“Finally, Ronnie Floyd knows that the church’s ‘main thing’ is to exalt Christ by doing all we can to reach the lost. Jesus summarized His ministry by saying, ‘The Son of Man has come to seek and save the lost.’ I cannot be around Pastor Ronnie without developing a greater passion to see the lost reached and a greater conviction that God wants to use us to do it. Pastor Ronnie believes the greatest days of evangelism are ahead of, not behind us.”

Greear concluded, “I believe Ronnie Floyd is the man whom the Holy Spirit has chosen for this moment, and urge you to lend your continued support to him for a second term as president of the Southern Baptist Convention. May God through him do exceedingly abundantly above all we could ask or think, for the glory of His name in the church in this generation and those that follow.”

Floyd, who has led Cross Church for 28 years, also serves as general editor of the Bible Studies for Life curriculum published by LifeWay Christian Resources and as lead pastor and strategist with the North American Mission Board he played an instrumental role in encouraging churches to adopt one of NAMB’s 32 Send Cities.

Floyd served as chairman of the SBC’s Great Commission Task Force in 2009-10 that set forth wide-ranging recommendations for expanding the SBC’s missions outreach. He is a former president of the SBC Pastors’ Conference and former chairman of the SBC Executive Committee. He also was a member of the SBC’s Program and Structure Task Force during the mid-1990s that produced The Covenant for a New Century restructuring, streamlining the number of SBC entities to nine from the former 12 and developing updated ministry assignments for each SBC entity.

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