January 13, 2025
LOUISVILLE, Ky. (KT) – Clint Pressley, president of the Southern Baptist Convention, doesn't want to be an activist president. He wants to highlight what Southern Baptists do well, including championing the Cooperative Program and celebrating the 100-year anniversary of the Baptist Faith and Message.
Come June 2025, when the Southern Baptist Convention convenes in Dallas, Pressley wants to "make that the two rails we run on: our confession and the Cooperative Program … I hope to point as much attention as I can on those two things."
Pressley, who also serves as senior pastor of Hickory Grove Baptist Church in Charlotte, N.C., explored his vision for the SBC with Kentucky Baptist Convention Executive Director Todd Gray on Leadership Lessons last week.
He noted challenges facing the Convention, including not talking about the Cooperative Program enough.
"Reviving, you know, a genuine love for and passion to talk about the CP and celebrate what it does," Pressley said. "It's been assumed … we love it, we know it's there, we actually need it, we just haven't talked about it a whole lot. I think it's good to raise that back up, and make that something that is on the front of our conversation and not the back."
For Pressley, strengths of the Convention included connectivity between the pastors of affiliating churches, SBC mission efforts and the seminary education made possible by CP.
Pressley and Gray also discussed the SBC Executive Committee and how Jeff Iorg, the recently installed CEO, is helping to rebuild trust in a Convention agency plagued by financial difficulties and scandal related to the handling of sexual abuse allegations.
"(The EC) is supposed to be running and us not thinking about it," and Pressley wants to use his term to help Iorg do that.
"Trust is not an instant win," Pressley said. "It's a brick-by-brick build that just takes doing the same thing, doing it well, doing it consistently, doing it normally, not causing trouble…over the course of time, you've built trust like that. Not with dynamics but with the really mundane."
Pressley said individual Christians can support the health of the Southern Baptist Convention — a collection of nearly 50,000 cooperating congregations— by being good church members.
"Be a church member that is there, that shows up on time, sings the song, gives money, supports the preacher…That is really a great way to be a Southern Baptist," he said.
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This story first appeared in Kentucky Today.
