Traylor to nominate Hunt for SBC president

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PENSACOLA (BP)—Ted Traylor, pastor of Olive Baptist Church in Pensacola, announced May 6 he will nominate Johnny M. Hunt, pastor of First Baptist Church of Woodstock, Ga., for president of the Southern Baptist Convention during the SBC’s June 10-11 annual meeting in Indianapolis. Hunt is among five announced nominees for the post, joining former International Mission Board missionary Avery Willis and Les Puryear, senior pastor of Lewisville (N.C.) Baptist Church, who recently were announced, Frank Cox, pastor of North Metro Baptist Church, Lawrenceville, Ga., and William L. (Bill) Wagner, a former Southern Baptist missionary and president of Olivet University International in San Francisco.

A native of North Carolina, Hunt has been pastor of the Woodstock church since December 1986. During his first year as pastor, the church baptized 318 people and had 268 additions by statement and letter. Since he arrived, the church has seen average Sunday school attendance grow from 275 to 4,705, according to the 2007 Annual Church Profile.

In the 21 years of Hunt’s pastorate, church membership has increased from 1,027 to 16,495. Current average church worship attendance is 6,180.

In 1980, while attending Southeastern Baptist Theological Seminary, Hunt served as pastor of Falls (N.C.) Baptist Church, which led North Carolina Baptists in Sunday school growth. During his pastorate, Longleaf Baptist Church in Wilmington, N.C., also led the Baptist state convention in baptisms for three consecutive years beginning in 1983.

FBC Woodstock relocated to an 82-acre site in the fall of 2004. The $54 million sanctuary, which seats 7,500, hosts two morning worship services.

Since 1987, the congregation has sent out more than 135 missionaries and started more than 78 churches. The congregation has developed ministries such as the “City of Refuge,” which provides an environment that enables hurting pastors and their families to find hope and healing.

Traylor said his “deep concern about the future of the Southern Baptist Convention” led him to want to nominate Hunt. “I just believe the Lord’s raised him up to do it,” Traylor told Baptist Press. “I believe he’s a man to do it for our future. I don’t know of a greater Acts 1:8 church in all of our convention than First Woodstock.”

“Some of us have been thinking about this [nominating Hunt] for 12 to 15 years,” Traylor told Georgia’s Christian Index newspaper. “I don’t think he has given any thought to this until recently, but the last time I discussed it with him, I saw a flicker in his eyes, and I believe God sparked a flame in his soul for this.”

Traylor listed three reasons that prompted him to announce his intention to nominate Hunt:

1) “Hunt has led First Baptist Woodstock to become a great, exemplary Acts 1:8 church in terms of missions giving and missions going.

2) “He has given evidence of a great interest and concern for the next generation of young pastors and for the millennial generation in general. No one has a better pastoral link to young ministers than Johnny Hunt, as evidenced through Woodstock’s Barnabas-Timothy Conferences.

3) “I believe Southern Baptists are looking for a future that is marked by unity, not division. Johnny Hunt has one fight in him and that is the good fight of faith. He is a leader who can forge a hopeful future that is centered around the Gospel and connected to the local church.”

Hunt is a graduate of Gardner-Webb College in Boiling Springs, N.C., where he was voted ministerial student of the year in 1979. He earned a master of divinity degree from Southeastern Seminary in 1981. The Chair of Church Growth at Southeastern was named for Hunt in 1997.

Hunt is married to the former Janet Allen of Wilmington, N.C. The couple has two daughters and four grandchildren.

Information from the 2007 Annual Church Profile for First Baptist Woodstock lists 462 baptisms and primary worship service attendance of 6,180. The congregation gave $393,798, or 2.2 percent, through the Cooperative Program from total undesignated receipts of $17,807,317. According to the ACP, the church’s total mission expenditures were $3,304,608, with $175,000 given for the Lottie Moon Christmas Offering for International Missions. The ACP did not record the amount the church gave for the Annie Armstrong Easter Offering for North American Missions.

Avery Willis, perhaps best known for creating MasterLife discipleship materials while serving as the president of the Indonesian Baptist Theological Seminary in Semarang, Indonesia, was first commissioned an International Mission Board missionary to Indonesia, along with his wife, Shirley, in 1964. He worked as an evangelist and church developer for six years before transferring to the seminary in Semarang, where he served on faculty for two years and as president for six years.

During his service there, the Southeast Asian nation experienced a revival in which 2 million people gave their hearts to Christ. The large number of converts prompted Willis to pioneer innovative strategies for extension education and led the way in developing the prototype for what would become the MasterLife disciplining process. During the next 15 years as head of the adult discipleship department at LifeWay Christian Resources, MasterLife was translated into more than 50 languages and used in more than 100 countries.

“I don’t know of anyone more loved and respected than Avery Willis,” Marshall said. “When someone first approached me about this, I thought, good grief why have we waited this long to do this? Creating MasterLife alone, because there is nothing quite like it, is enough for Southern Baptists to bestow this honor on Avery, but there is more. I’m glad that finally, in his retirement years, we have the opportunity to give Avery this honor.”

Willis left LifeWay in 1994 to become the International Mission Board’s senior vice president of overseas operations during a time of expansion and strategy changes in the Southern Baptist missionary endeavor. All totaled, Willis spent 25 years in missionary service, retiring from the IMB in February 2004.

“We could not overstate the significance of Avery’s leadership as senior vice president of overseas operations,” IMB President Jerry Rankin said at Willis’ retirement. “When Avery came to that position 10 years ago, we had just reported 2,000 new churches started around the world; this past year we reported 16,000 new churches. Ten years ago, we had rejoiced in reaching 251,000 new believers baptized, but this past year the reports exceeded half a million new believers, more than twice as many.”

Born in Lepanto, Ark., Willis served as pastor of three churches in Oklahoma and Texas before he and his wife began their missionary service. In addition to MasterLife, Willis served as associate editor of the Disciple’s Study Bible and either wrote or co-wrote nine other books including On Mission with God, a book he authored with a friend, Henry Blackaby. He is currently the executive direc

Les Puryear, a native of North Carolina, has been pastor of Lewisville Baptist Church since 2005. Prior to his call into fulltime vocational ministry in 1996, Puryear served as a telecommunications executive for 25 years.

McKissic cited four reasons for nominating Puryear:

1) “Les is a small church pastor and he represents the majority of the convention. It’s time for the Southern Baptist Convention to acknowledge that small churches are just as valuable in God’s Kingdom as any other size church. Les will encourage the convention to provide specific support in the way of conferences, materials, etc. for the small church environment.

2) “Les wants to continue the direction that Frank Page has started of getting people involved in the national convention who have not been involved in the past. This will include small and mid-size church leaders, and people from varying ethnic backgrounds.

3) “Les holds to a Reformed view of salvation but it does not matter to him your theological position on soteriology—whether Arminian, Calvinism or anything in between. If you have a passion to reach people for Jesus Christ, then Les believes you should be welcome to be a part of the work of the Southern Baptist Convention. It’s time for the local church to stop talking about evangelism and missions and start doing evangelism and missions.”

4) “With his founding and organizing of the inaugural Small Church Leadership Conference in March 2008, Les has demonstrated his heart for pastors of small churches and his leadership abilities by conceptualizing and organizing a major conference which was joined in sponsorship by SBC entities such as LifeWay, the International Mission Board, the North American Mission Board, Guidestone, Southeastern Baptist Theological Seminary, and the Baptist State Convention of North Carolina.

“I have known Les to be a person of integrity, vision, and compassion,” McKissic concluded. “He wants to work with all of the people in the Southern Baptist Convention, no matter what their differences are in regard to non-essential doctrinal beliefs, race or church size. It will be my privilege to nominate him as the next President of the SBC.”

Puryear is a graduate of Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary in Fort Worth, Texas, and currently is working on a doctorate at Trinity Theological Seminary in Newburgh, Ind. He and his wife, the former Debbie Lewter of Wilmington, N.C., have two sons and two grandchildren.

Information from the 2007 Annual Church Profile for Lewisville Baptist Church, lists 11 baptisms and primary worship service attendance of 195. The church received $4,751 for the Lottie Moon Christmas Offering for International Missions and $1,500 for the Annie Armstrong Easter Offering for North American Missions. According to the ACP, the church gave $20,331, or 5.9 percent, through the Cooperative Program in 2007 from total undesignated receipts of $343,795.