Thousands of people came to our Pinnacle Hills Campus for our first ever Fireworks at the Crosses night. People were everywhere! It was filled with fun, excitement, music, and fellowship. There were two major highlights:

1. The baptism of 61 people at the outdoor baptistry at the Crosses.
2. A superb fireworks show. Absolutely splendid!

Last night may have created a major tradition in Northwest Arkansas. What a night! I cannot wait to see some of the pictures and video footage.

Thousands of people came to each one of our campuses yesterday for our Summer Freedom Celebration. Oh my friends, what a super morning. Last night was great because we were ushered into it by a super morning. It was a thrilling and exciting morning, resulting in many decisions for Christ and hundreds praying for our nation. Oh my, what a morning.

Well, when I look back at yesterday, I look back with great, great hope for our nation. If indeed Northwest Arkansas is a microcosm of America, then our nation has great hope for the future. You are a great people and I love you.

Pray for America this week.

This Sunday is going to be a wonderful day; it’s our Summer Freedom Celebration. During the morning services at each campus, we will have a great program of music, drama, and dance celebrating our great nation. This year, we’ll present a Historic Parade of Uniforms that will chronicle our nation’s military uniforms from the Civil War to modern times. We will conclude the service with a short message about what is on my heart for America. Remember, preschool ministries will run as usual that morning, but there will be no children’s church.

Sunday evening, both campuses will meet at the Pinnacle Hills crosses for a night full of fun and fireworks. The festivities start at 7:00 p.m. with music and food for purchase. At 8:00, I will be baptizing outside under the crosses. We will wrap up the evening with some amazing fireworks over the crosses. Make sure to bring your lawn chairs or blankets!

Please don’t miss Sunday. It’s going to be a great day, and it’s a great opportunity to invite someone who needs Christ or a church home. On special days like this, people are more willing to come to church.

Make every effort to be here on Sunday and to bring someone with you.

See you then.

It is time to talk about the possibilities of this coming Sunday. Other than Christmas and Easter, I do not know of any Sunday that has greater potential to touch the hearts of people more than what will take place this Sunday. In fact, among those that are truly spiritually lost, this coming Sunday probably has more reaching potential than even Christmas or Easter.

The exciting Summer Freedom Celebration, our annual God and Country Day, will take place this Sunday. It will be one exciting and eventful day. When people leave on Sunday morning, they will leave loving America more and prayerfully loving our God above everything and everyone else. Music, drama, worship, and video will engage you thoroughly. This is a day you just cannot miss.

I will be speaking on, What Is On My Heart About America. Honestly, my message will be only 15-20 minutes, but I believe it will be a powerful word for our generation.

It is time to begin inviting people to this Sunday’s morning worship services. People of all kinds will love this Sunday, from children to adults. Invite people of all kinds, from those who have served in the military to those who have not. Invite people who love America and those who struggle with our nation from time to time. Invite people who are religious and those who are not religious. Everywhere you go, invite people.

One more important thing: do NOT miss the Fireworks At The Crosses on our Pinnacle Hills campus. Beginning at 7:00 p.m., people will begin to gather. You can purchase food on site or bring your own. You can come alone, with your family, or tailgate with friends. It will be a picnic kind of atmosphere with great fellowship, music, and patriotic celebration. This will be the first 4th of July Fireworks Show in our region and yes, anyone can come. There is no cost for coming. I am also going to baptize in our outdoor baptistery, located at the base of the crosses. Oh my friends, do not miss Sunday night.

What a day. What an opportunity. Let’s celebrate America!

It is time.

Last night I was able to go to the Northwest Arkansas Naturals baseball game. I was able to attend with some friends and we had a great time together. I have been to the stadium for probably five games this season.

The new stadium in Springdale is absolutely fabulous. It is a great venue and will have a super future in our region. The city of Springdale and Chamber of Commerce deserve a big “thanks” for bringing professional baseball to our region. The future is bright for that entire section of the Northwest Arkansas region.

Seeing a few thousand people gathered for that baseball game last night, reminded me of the great possibilities for the coming Sunday as we have our major God and Country Day, Summer Freedom Celebration. My friends, you will love this presentation. Let’s be conscientious about inviting people all week. I assure you, they will be glad they came.

The Sunday night FIREWORKS AT THE CROSSES is going to be a special night at our Pinnacle Hills campus. This is for both of our campuses and hopefully a few thousand people will engage with us for this new event.

God moved powerfully among our students this past week at Orange Beach, Alabama. I am thrilled with the initial results of the Lord’s work among our students. I have heard nothing but great things about what he did. We rejoice that God answered our prayers. Amen!

So what happened at Student Camp? Not that a few numbers here and there mean everything, because they do not, but they do represent at least some of God’s activity among us.

• 337 students attended, 188 from Springdale and 149 from Pinnacle Hills.
• 72 professions of faith, 41 from Springdale and 31 from Pinnacle Hills.
• 50 baptisms in the Gulf, 32 from Springdale and 18 from Pinnacle Hills.
• 2 students surrendered to full-time ministry, both from Pinnacle Hills.

Is that not a great report? Praise God!

Our thanks goes to Shawn Smith and Chuck Butler, from Springdale, and Josh Wisdom and Matt Clough, from Pinnacle Hills. These student pastors, their staff and their lay teams did a great job! Praise God for each of you.

In closing, Matt Clough emailed me today. He said that the 74 year-old grandmother of one of the students who attended camp was saved at the end of the service at Pinnacle Hills yesterday. Praise God! He is moving.

Pray for our students and leaders this week.

Finally, do not miss next Sunday, our Summer Freedom Celebration, God and Country Day
Celebration! I will bring a word about America at the end of the presentation. It will be a great day. Please invite people!

There is a real need in the church of Jesus for us to lift one another up. What does this mean? Let me give you some thoughts:

1. Lift one another up in words. It is really tragic how many Christian people are so mean spirited in their words and attitudes. Friends, if we have experienced true genuine salvation, we are family. Did you hear that? Family! We have been washed in the blood of Jesus Christ and we are not to treat our brothers and sisters in ways that do not honor our Savior. We are accountable for our words.

2. Lift one another up in actions. Tough words are usually followed with actions of carnality. Body language coupled with tough words results in disastrous relationships. Actions like these should not be in the life of the believer.

3. Lift one another up in prayer. This is the real issue. When we pray for one another, tough words and actions will not be nearly as likely to occur. Why? Because when we call another person’s name before God in prayer, I think God does a work in our hearts about that person. We become more loving, more tolerant, and more kind to them.

Therefore, in this day in which churches in our nation are filled with dysfunction and sinful relationships, we need to stand up and treat one another like Jesus would. If there is an issue, deal with it in a godly manner, just like Jesus. Reconciliation is always the heart of the Savior and should be our heart as well.

May God give all of us a commitment like this.

My friends, this week we have over 350 students attending Student Camp in Orange Beach, Alabama. Camp Pastor, Ken Freeman, will preach and teach the Word of God to our students, while others will complement that teaching with various seminars to deepen discipleship. Of course, with a crowd that size from our church added to the other churches present, there are bound to be students who need Christ as Savior and Lord.

How can you pray for Student Camp?

Pray that:

• Christ-followers will deepen their walk with Christ and make a commitment to serious discipleship.
• The anointing of the Holy Spirit will be on Ken Freeman, other teachers, the worship team, and our own student ministers.
• Many will come to Christ as Savior and Lord.
• The Lord will call several people into the ministry and global missions.
• God will ignite a spiritual fire within our students.

Let’s pray this week. This is serious business.

Today, I want to share with you some of my final reflections from last week’s Annual Meeting of the Southern Baptist Convention.  I have had the weekend to consider matters and reflect upon them. I hope you will endure my final thoughts on the meeting.  Perhaps you will be encouraged.

1. The election of Johnny Hunt as President is highly significant.  The Southern Baptist Convention is in great need of strong and passionate leadership. The annual statistics and low participation level at our annual meeting indicate that we are in major need for revival and reform.  Quite honestly, we are in ICU, and we need a mighty spiritual giant like Johnny Hunt to sound the alarm, rally the troops, set forth a fresh new vision, and provide all of us with hope.  Johnny has had unusual favor of God upon his ministry, and I firmly believe it will come upon his leadership as President.
2. The work of Southern Baptists globally is highly encouraging. God is working mightily around the world.  Record salvations, record baptisms, record church starts are happening globally.  Your 5,300 plus missionaries we help send overseas are on the cutting edge of all of this. We can be grateful for the visionary leadership of Dr. Jerry Rankin and his leadership team.  It is highly encouraging.  The work globally is like a fresh breeze into the life of our convention of churches.
3. I believe with the events of this week and where matters exist in our denomination, there will be a new unity emerge under the leadership of Dr. Hunt. I think God has positioned matters for this moment; therefore, we need to get ready for some great things to happen in the future. Unity must occur for revival and reform to take place.
4. The Southern Baptist Convention is in need of being reinvented for the future. In the mid-1990′s, I had the distinct privilege to be a part of a seven-member team to restructure the Southern Baptist Convention. Matters have so changed dramatically in our world today that we need to reinvent the denomination for the future.  Everything needs to be looked at again.  I mean everything.  If we take serious the commission of Jesus to win the world, we must position ourselves to be able to do that.  We can no longer get caught up in matters that distract us from the main thing. Petty denominational demands or desires need to cease. The autonomy of the local church has been our historical precedence, and quite honestly, is a hill worth dying on as a Southern Baptist. We do not need to revise history, we need to listen to it.
5. Finally, we must return this denomination to the local church. For several years, we have become more and more centered on the “system,” “the bureaucracy,” “the convention,” and its “entities.”  No, no, no, this is not the way to success or to the future.  One thing we established a decade or so ago was that this denomination is centered on the local church.  It is NOT a top-down government, where Nashville dictates agenda and direction. The heartbeat is the local church.  The world will be won through local churches, working together through a denomination that facilitates the work and vision of local churches to win the world to Christ.  My friend, we must return to the centrality of the local church. While I love and appreciate our institutions, boards, and their leaders, it is time to go back to the local church.  This is where the action is.

These are my reflections post-SBC 2008. Have a great week.  Talk to you tomorrow.

Today I am coming home from Indianapolis after attending the annual meeting of the Southern Baptist Convention. I leave very encouraged and hopeful. It has been a very good week. We have been encouraged and blessed. The schedule has been rigorous. I mean it has been crazy, being able to sleep very, very little each night.

The International Mission Board report last night was fabulous. Oh my friend – it is powerful what God is doing worldwide through the work of the IMB. Our weekly giving supports all of this global spiritual movement. It is really, really exciting.

We come away from this convention after electing Dr. Johnny Hunt as our new President. He is a very close brother. I called a prayer meeting with a few close friends before the election, praying over him and Ted Traylor, his nominator. Dr. Traylor was very powerful and influential, and, most of all, anointed by God to do it. Oh my friends, the Lord was with this entire experience. The Lord has raised up Dr. Hunt to lead our denomination. We have had some great moments this week with those two men and others. Thank God for friends.

Sunday is coming. I have a special word for you this Lord’s Day. I hope you will come and bring someone with you.

Have a great weekend.

Yesterday afternoon, Dr. Johnny Hunt, Pastor of the First Baptist Church in Woodstock, Georgia, was elected as President of the Southern Baptist Convention. This is a wonderful miracle of God and we are all rejoicing.  This is a much needed directional shift in our convention.  Johnny is very committed to reaching the world for Christ.

I spoke tonight at a reception for Johnny.  Jeana and I are rejoicing fully for he and Janet. Their son-in-law, Pete Hixson, was on our team as one of our student pastors.  Pete is a pastor in Atlanta now.  He and Holly were wonderful staff members and blessings to our lives.  Johnny has preached at our church and our people love him.

Rejoice, my friend, we have a major leader in evangelicalism that will hold God’s Truth high and have a great commitment to winning the world to Christ. He knows how to mobilize people and churches.  This is a major moment for our convention.  What a joy to know God has answered our prayers.

Rejoice.