Southern Baptist President Bart Barber draws crowd near Indy before annual meeting

[mwai_chat context=”Let’s have a discussion about this article:nnGREENFIELD, Indiana (RNS) — Before the debates, decisions and elections of the Southern Baptist Convention’s annual meeting, Texas pastor Bart Barber spent the last Sunday of his SBC presidency at a church outside Indianapolis that added an overflow room because the head of its denomination was in town.At Calvary Baptist Church in Greenfield, Indiana, about 200 people gathered to hear Barber preach after seeing a new member get baptized and listening to Native Praise, a guest choir, sing hymns in Cherokee, Muskogee and English.
“Bart’s been the man of the hour for the last two years,” said Pastor Roger Kinion, senior pastor of the church 18 miles from Indianapolis on Sunday (June 9). “There’ve been a lot of difficult issues in our convention and in our society, and he has carried that torch well for us.”
Southern Baptists are expected to consider a second vote on a proposed constitutional amendment that would declare that one way a church is considered to be in “friendly cooperation” is if it “affirms, appoints, or employs only men as any kind of pastor or elder as qualified by Scripture.” As they are likely to hear six nomination speeches about Barber’s possible successors, they also are expected to vote on recommendations from the SBC’s Abuse Reform Implementation Task Force for possible next steps related to a database and funding to address abuse.
Kinion noted that he had an introductory conversation with Barber, who called from his Texas farm where he feeds cattle when he’s not pas …nnDiscussion:nn” ai_name=”RocketNews AI: ” start_sentence=”Can I tell you more about this article?” text_input_placeholder=”Type ‘Yes'”]