In his final monthly video as president of the Southern Baptist Convention, Bryant Wright offers a preview at www.Pray4SBC.com of the annual meeting in New Orleans, noting that unengaged, unreached people groups and church planting will be the main focuses. [Editor’s note: the original URL (link) referenced is no longer valid, so the link has been removed.]

“As we prepare for our convention, I want you to know that I’m very excited about coming together with so many of you in New Orleans this year. It obviously will be a historic convention,” Wright said, referring to the anticipated election of the SBC’s first African American president, Fred Luter.

The June 19-20 convention also will have a clear theme of “Jesus: to the Neighborhood and the Nations,” Wright said.

“We want to share the Gospel of Jesus Christ in our neighborhoods and our local mission fields where our churches are planted but also realize as we do that we also want to go to the nations,” Wright, pastor of Johnson Ferry Baptist Church in Marietta, Ga., said.

At last year’s annual meeting in Phoenix, more than 600 churches went forward to commit to embracing an unengaged, unreached people group.

“Now that number is almost up to 1,200 churches along with all of our seminaries and some of our Baptist colleges. So God is working in local churches to give that local church a sense of responsibility of embracing a people group that has not heard the Gospel,” Wright said.

Last year 3,800 people groups were classified as unengaged and unreached, Wright said, but contacts now have been made with about 400 of those people groups.

“As a matter of fact, Johnson Ferry had its first trip to engage one of those unengaged people groups in northern India this past spring. I know many of the churches are in that process,” he said.

Also at the New Orleans convention, an emphasis will be placed on the unreached areas of the United States and Canada, such as metropolitan areas where the North American Mission Board plans to plant more churches.

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