North Carolina pastor elected president of Southern Baptist Convention

The Southern Baptist Convention has elected Pastor Clint Pressley of Hickory Baptist Church in Charlotte as its new president. He was elected on the second runoff ballot following a vote by messengers gathered this week in Indianapolis.

Pressley, who has led his church for the past 14 years, prefers a suit and tie and a more traditional approach in worship, and he has indicated that his more formal style will translate into his leadership. “It seems like the kind of rhetoric and the temperature is really high, and I’d like to see it come down a good bit,” he told Religion News Service earlier this year.

He repeated that message at a forum hosted by the National African American Fellowship of the SBC earlier this week, saying he hoped Southern Baptists, known for evangelism and missions, would “get our attention focused back on what we do. We got to quit arguing and start going back to work.”

Pressley was one of six candidates seeking the SBC presidency, an influential volunteer role in the nation’s largest Protestant denomination. Three candidates — North Carolina Pastor Bruce Frank, Oklahoma Pastor Mike Keahbone and Tennessee Pastor Jared Moore — were eliminated after the first round of votes. David Allen, a longtime seminary pastor, missed the cutoff during a first runoff.

The field of six candidates was the largest since 2008. This year’s race was the first to be undecided after one runoff since 2016. That year, a runoff between North Carolina megachurch Pastor J.D. Greear and Tennessee megachurch Pastor Steve Gaines ended in a tie. Greear dropped out of the race but was elected president two years later.

Pressley was nominated in January by Pastor Chris Justice of Lee Park Baptist Church in Monroe, N.C., who said he considered Pressley “to be a man of conviction who is joyfully orthodox, devoted to the Great Commission and committed to our cooperation as Southern Baptists.”

–Alan Goforth | Metro Voice