PHOENIX (BP) – The Southern Baptist Convention Pastors’ Conference announced last month the first 30 recipients of $1,000 scholarships to attend the Pastors’ Conference and SBC annual meeting this summer.
“We are thrilled that we have been able to help this group of men to attend, grateful to those who have given and anticipate giving out even more in the near future,” Pastors’ Conference President Dave Miller told Baptist Press in written comments. “Our regret is that we will not be able to help everyone who wants to come to the annual meeting and Pastors’ Conference.”
Larger churches traditionally have helped fund the Pastors’ Conference. This year, however, conference costs have been covered by New Orleans Baptist Theological Seminary’s Caskey Center for Church Excellence and other sponsors, freeing the conference’s traditional sponsors to help by funding attendance for pastors who would not otherwise be able to make the trip to Phoenix.
According to an April 20 post on the SBC Voices blog, donors of the $30,000 in scholarships announced thus far include: Cross Church in northwest Arkansas; Hickory Grove Baptist Church in Charlotte, N.C.; Johnson Ferry Baptist Church in Marietta, Ga.; an individual donor at First Southern Baptist Church in Oklahoma City; First Baptist Church in Woodstock, Ga.; Liberty Baptist Church in Hampton, Va.; Broadmoor Baptist Church in Madison, Miss.; Cornerstone Fellowship Baptist Church in Haskell, Texas; and the SBC of Virginia.
A full list of scholarship recipients is available on SBC Voices.
To qualify for a scholarship, applicants had to pastor churches with average worship attendance of fewer than 200 people, and the congregations they lead had to be “either unable or unwilling to fund expenses” for Pastors’ Conference attendance, according to a March 30 SBC Voices post announcing the scholarships.