SAN ANTONIO - While thousands of fans cheered for the San Antonio Spurs basketball team in the Alamo-dome, several thousand Southern Baptist pastors cheered for Jesus Christ at the Southern Baptist Pastors' Conference in the nearby Henry B. Gonzalez Convention Center.
"The issue is not that the Spurs are playing in town in the NBA finals," Hayes Wicker, Pastors' Conference president, noted. "Instead, we want to stress our victory and identity in Jesus Christ this weekend.
"We believe God has brought us here for a special reason ... so that we can say, like Jacob, that 'we have met God face to face' ... and (can) experience real revival."
The Sunday evening session - encompassing expository preaching and personal testimony - featured Roger Spradlin, co-pastor of the 7,000-member Valley Baptist Church in Bakersfield; and Charles Colson, founder of Prison Fellowship who accepted Christ after gaining notoriety for his role in the 1970s Watergate scandal.
The conference theme - "Jesus Christ . from Him, through Him, to Him" - reminded pastors of the source of their strength and passion for ministry.
Colson addressed the theme by warning that Christians face "a vicious attack by neo-atheists," citing the popularity of such recent books as "The God Delusion" by Richard Dawkins. "This is a virulent strain of atheism that seeks to destroy our belief system," Colson asserted.
To engage the culture and counter the prevailing belief that truth is relative, Colson said Christians must do better at explaining, in a winsome way, what they believe and why they believe it. To start, Christians must understand that Christianity is more than simply a personal relationship with Jesus, Colson said.
"We have to understand that Christianity is a worldview," he noted. "Christianity is a way of seeing all of life and all of reality. It's the way of understanding ultimate truth."
Beyond understanding Christianity in its entirety, Colson said Christians must be faithful to pass their beliefs to their children.
"What is wrong with us when kids are being raised to believe there is no such thing as truth?" he asked. "That's the end of the Christian Gospel if we can't make a truth claim in our culture today."
Spradlin encouraged pastors in their calling as he preached from Timothy.
"Beginners are a dime a dozen," he declared. "It is terminators that are rare."
To have a life lived well and to finish well, Spradlin urged pastors to:
"When we look at Apostle Paul's life we see maturity. There is a toughness about his life," he said. "The Christian life is not a life of ease.
"The ministry is not about how fast we run or the size of the crowds we minister to. It is about endurance."
"There's a lot of rubbish in the ministry," he said. But "we have to remember that our ultimate reward is not from people. It is from the Lord."
- Enjoy the fellowship of friends
"None of us are likely to finish well alone," Spradlin said. "God has designed us to work in a mutual relationship. We need accountability, someone to snoop around in our lives. We need to be able to let down our guard."
"If not forget, we certainly need to forgive them," he said. "Bitterness comes from unhealed wounds and . poisons your prayer life . wrecks your home life, blows the candles of joy right out of your soul.
"You cannot get through the Christian life without getting hurt," Spradlin declared. "The key is to forgive the failures of the past and to get back up."
He shared a personal testimony about his first-born, four-year-old daughter Charity who was killed by a hit-and-run driver about a year after he began serving at the Bakersfield church.
The driver turned herself in to authorities, but one Saturday morning she came knocking on the door of the Spradlins' house. She was in tears and begged them for forgiveness. Spradlin said at that moment he prayed and asked God for help in how to respond.
"I forgive you," Spradlin told the weeping driver whose recklessness had caused such pain.
"Some people have a long list of those who have wronged them. Bitterness comes from unhealed wounds, which can ruin your ministry," Spradlin said. "People are going to hurt you ... . Paul had learned to let go, and so must we."
During a conference prayer emphasis, author and prayer leader T.W. Hunt declared baptisms are decreasing in Southern Baptist churches because they are "not doing evangelism God's way."
"God cannot use our arrogance," he said, asking the assembly to individually "pray that God will reveal what in us is arrogant enough that it impedes His work."
Hunt directed the prayers thematically - "otherness" of God in churches, institutions and in the Convention; love as sacrificial and divine; humility as a non-negotiating affirmation of others; and Christ's supremacy and high-mindedness as preparation for eternal nobility in Heaven.
"Never do anything in your ministry that Jesus would not do," Hunt urged the pastors. "Pray to be high-minded, not petty."
The Pastors' Conference also featured worship and breakout sessions.
Other speakers included Jerry Vines, Dwayne Mercer, Michael Catt, James McDonald and Paige Patterson.
(Includes reporting by Brent Thompson.)
P/559.229.9533 