fbpx
×

Log into your account

We have changed software providers for our subscription database. Old login credentials will no longer work. Please click the "Register" link below to create a new account. If you do not know your new account number you can contact [email protected]
5,406: SBC’s unofficial Columbus registration
Brian Koonce, The Pathway/Baptist Press
June 19, 2015
3 MIN READ TIME

5,406: SBC’s unofficial Columbus registration

5,406: SBC’s unofficial Columbus registration
Brian Koonce, The Pathway/Baptist Press
June 19, 2015

The Southern Baptist Convention’s (SBC) annual meeting drew 5,406 messengers to Columbus June 16-17 from the nation’s 46,000-plus Southern Baptist churches. The unofficial total is a 2 percent rise from last year’s 5,295 messengers in Baltimore.

SBC registration secretary Jim Wells said the results were slightly below his pre-annual meeting guess, but good nonetheless, especially from Ohio.

6-19-15attendance.jpg

Photo by Van Payne

More than 5,000 messengers attended the Southern Baptist Convention annual meeting June 16-17 at the Greater Columbus Convention Center in Columbus, Ohio. The 2015 meeting was themed Great Awakening with a full night session dedicated to a national call to prayer to all Southern Baptists for the next Great Awakening and to reach the world for Christ.

“[SBC President] Ronnie Floyd has spent a lot of time here along with Jack Kwok [executive director of the State Convention of Baptists in Ohio] mobilizing the churches to get them to turn out, and you could tell.”

Ohio churches indeed turned out in force for the first-ever SBC annual meeting in their state; their 714 messengers dwarfed their 2014 total of 89 and represented the largest state delegation. The state with the next largest contingent was Tennessee at 459, with Kentucky coming in just behind at 446. North Carolina was fourth in line with 351 registered messengers. Guam, Oregon, Maine and Vermont sent 1 messenger each.

Official numbers will be released later in June; the numbers do not include guests or children.

Next year, with the convention headed to St. Louis, Wells said he expects the location to yield a higher attendance.

“I think we’ll definitely have more in St. Louis,” he said. “Missouri will show up big, and the state conventions around Missouri are close.”

The unofficial messenger registration numbers by states and U.S. territories are as follows: Alabama, 225; Alaska, 17; Arizona, 24; Arkansas, 177; California, 113; Colorado, 15; Connecticut, 6; Delaware, 8; Florida, 275; Georgia, 287; Guam, 1; Hawaii, 8; Idaho, 6; Illinois, 138; Indiana, 128; Iowa, 6; Kansas, 28; Kentucky, 446; Louisiana, 160; Maine, 1; Maryland, 98; Massachusetts, 9; Michigan, 105; Minnesota, 2; Mississippi, 181; Missouri, 182; Nebraska, 2; Nevada, 23; New Hampshire, 4; New Jersey, 30; New Mexico, 30; New York, 40; North Carolina, 351; Ohio, 711; Oklahoma, 114; Oregon, 1; Pennsylvania, 57; Puerto Rico 3; South Carolina, 185; South Dakota, 5; Tennessee, 459; Texas, 319; Utah, 5; Vermont, 1; Virginia, 237; Washington, 8; Washington, D.C., 10; West Virginia, 66; Wisconsin, 7; Wyoming, 14. There were 81 messengers who were approved through the credentials process but were unaffiliated with a state convention.

Wells was first elected registration secretary in 2002 and was re-elected to another term June 16. He serves as the Missouri Baptist Convention’s Cooperative Program missionary for strategic partnerships.

(EDITOR’S NOTE – Brian Koonce is a writer for The Pathway newsjournal of the Missouri Baptist Convention.)