COLUMBUS, Ohio – Thousands of Southern Baptists will flock to St. Louis for the annual meeting of the Southern Baptist Convention (SBC), June 14-15, 2016.
Jack Kwok, executive director for the State Convention of Baptists in Ohio, passed the torch to Jim Breeden, Director of Missions for the St. Louis Metro Baptist Association, and several other Missouri Baptist leaders at the end of the 2015 annual meeting here, June 17.
“St. Louis, it is our joy to hand over to you the love and the passion that Southern Baptists have to reach lost people,” said Kwok, reporting that nearly 350 people throughout Columbus professed faith in Christ because of Southern Baptists witnessing through the Crossover program. “It is our honor and privilege to hand it over to you and to encourage Southern Baptists to come to St. Louis, a gateway city, a very important city in the Midwest of the United States of America.”
Breeden addressed the convention and accepted the handoff on behalf of Missouri Baptists.
“We have thoroughly enjoyed our time in Columbus, both in Crossover and in the convention, and you all have done a fabulous, fabulous job,” Breeden said. “But we are here to invite you to St. Louis.”
One of the most unreached areas in Missouri, the St. Louis metro has a population of roughly 3 million people, only some 20 percent of whom come from evangelical churches, Breeden told messengers. Additionally, St. Louis is one of the North American Mission Board’s SEND cities, where thousands of immigrants from across the world have come to reside—including nearly 75,000 Bosnians who need an evangelical church to be planted in their midst.
“So we invite you to come both to reach the neighborhoods of St. Louis—some of which are unreached completely—and also to reach the nations, the peoples that have come to St. Louis,” Breeden said. “We have prayed … for laborers for the fields that are white unto harvest. So we hope that you will come for a short time. And we pray that some of you will stay for a long time and help us both plant and replant churches to the glory of God in St. Louis.”