Southern Baptist Convention Survival Guide

(see my next blog if you are not able to attend the SBC)

I have attended SBC annual meetings since 1989 through many seasons of life. Here are my suggestions for navigating your experience.

1 - Sign up for the free lunch/dinner meetings.To miss out on these is a rookie mistake. Sign up early. Get the free ones first (even if they are early in the morning). Buy a ticket for those meetings you want to attend, particularly if they include a meal. Leaving the convention center for a meal is over-rated. You can eat out another time. If you don’t get a free ticket or tickets are sold out, go hang out at the entrance after everyone goes in and ask if there are more seats available either free or at a cost. The organization may have unoccupied seats with food they paid for and may give you a seat. Worth a try if you want to attend a particular meeting. They may let you stand in the back and listen anyway. 

2 - Wear comfortable shoes.You will be walking and standing a lot. Trust me on this. The parking lot or shuttle entry is a long way from the meeting room and exhibit hall no matter what city you are in. 

3 - Come prepared to take home books and giveaways. When my kids were younger, they loved picking up their favorite candies from the booths in the exhibit hall. The good items go fast. Do a quick walk through when you first arrive at the meeting so you can get the best bag, nicest pen, a highlight marker, plastic cups, and t-shirts. My personal t-shirt collection is restocked at the SBC every year. Our wedding cups were broken long ago but we have the SBC every year to give us new ones. 

Books are given away at some of the meal/meetings. You don’t want to miss these. I have so many great books that I received free at the Southern Baptist Convention. Fun fact: If you are an alumni at your school’s booth, tell them because they sometimes have an extra special gift for you under the table. If you are interested in the topic of the booth, talk to the people because they came to talk to you. Learn something about it. You may find you are talking to the author of a book or a seminary professor and didn’t realize it. I met a lot of people at the SBC that I would not otherwise had the opportunity to speak to. 

4 – Watch and meet people.This is fun. I like to watch to find people I know so I can reconnect but if you are a newbie it is fun to just watch the different people. My favorite scene one year was sitting in the exhibit hall at the tables resting for a bit during a lunch break. A well-dressed elderly couple sat down and she rummaged through her big purse. She pulled out a pack of peanut butter crackers and apples for each of them and they drank cups of water from the water fountain. No restaurant meal for them. I regret not meeting them because I just know I would have made some friends that day.

5 – Go to the meeting.There is a lot going on around the convention that you may be tempted to skip out on the meeting itself. Don’t do this. Get ready, you will learn more about parliamentary procedure by attending business sessions here than anywhere else. Phrases like “speaking to the motion” “call for a vote” and all kinds of behaviors that are otherwise weird the entire rest of the year happen at the SBC. It is made up of lots of different types and kinds of people. You catch that diversity when they speak into the microphone. The meeting is filled with entity reports, videos, music, prayer, and business sessions. Watch the schedule to be sure you are in the room when the meeting happens. If you don’t, you will be embarrassed that you missed an important vote while you were eating a doughnut in the foyer. 

I like to sit in front of a big screen in the ginormous meeting room. If you sit up front, even close, there is so much walking around that you will be distracted. If you are a couple and get split up, you can find each other in the convention hall by using microphone numbers as a guide. They will be clearly marked. “I’m sitting behind microphone 7 to the left of the handicapped section” or “facing front, I’m in the section left of mic 3, row 4, inside seat.” Trust me, it is hard to find people in the masses. If you are meeting someone during a break, the best way is to set a spot at a particular booth in the exhibit hall. Choose a booth that has chairs so you can sit while you wait.

6 - Meet people.I have met so many nice people and reconnected with others at the SBC. That is the most fun part of it all. I tell my son Jason, now 30, that I had him at the SBC in Las Vegas in a stroller. In LV, all the buildings were connected by having you walk through the casinos. It was the only way to stay out of the 110-degree heat. But, we kept getting kicked out and shown the door. I did not understand why until we were taking to a lady who was running a game in one of the casinos about who were were, what we believed, and why we were in LV. She looked up at a monitor and said, “Oh no, they are coming after you.” She explained that security is supposed to keep minors out of the casino but they only enforced it by kicking out little kids (and their mothers) so they could say they were doing their jobs. She said they didn’t bother obvious teenagers who had money to put into the machines. I didn’t realize I was going to learn about gambling and casinos that year at the SBC. It gave me a truth for when I play three truths and a lie: “I have been kicked out of several casinos in Las Vegas.” That same year, I was keeping my son entertained during a free meal keynote speaker. I turned around and saw Jerry Vines (you can google him) at the next table watching my 8-month old and grinning. It made my day that he was not upset there was a kid in the room. I have found it to be a kid-friendly meeting. 

I met a retired missionary in the restroom. I had read a book about her to my kids and I recognized her by her nametag. I hope she was as glad to chat with me as I was with her. (In case you are curious, it was Julia Graham, http://www.baptist.org.il/news/post/160/Celebrating-the-Life-of-Missionary-Julia-Graham who, with her husband Finlay, http://www.bpnews.net/6470/tough-tender-servant-to-arab-world-mission-pioneer-finlay-graham-dies served in Lebanon.) I had to include the links so you would know why I was so excited to run into her—even if it was in the ladies’ room.

I had gifted my son the book “Spiritual Disciplines of the Christian Life” when he was a college freshman. It impacted him as powerfully as it had me. We were in the exhibit hall one year

when I saw the author of that book, Donald Whitney, walk by and I told Jason who he was. We didn’t meet him but that is the kind of experience you can have at the SBC if you try. If you are a Baptist nerd like I am, you will have a blast.

1969

I was 9 in 1969—turned 10 in November of that year. It was the year that man first walked on the moon. On the same day in July that Neil Armstrong set foot on the moon, I made history for myself.

I made a wonderful decision. Nine year-olds aren’t known for that. Nine year olds are known for liking candy and playing house. They are known for waiting for their mamas and daddys to fix them meals and make sure their clothes are clean.

Nine year olds are not known for great decision-making. In fact, they are so not known for it that they are usually supervised by an adult when simply living life. Wherever they go, someone is supposed to be in charge of watching them.

However, besides all that, I made a wise decision at age 9. I decided several things. One, is that I felt very alone in the world. You wouldn’t think that a girl living with a brother, sister, and two parents in a 1200 sq. foot home would feel alone but I did. We had one bathroom but I still felt lonely. Lonely can happen in a crowd.

I searched for a solution to my loneliness. I realized that God made me and made the world. Second, God knew who I was. He knew I was in this world and He loved me. I learned all of this at the Baptist church where my family attended no less than three times a week.

I owned a Bible. I still have it. It was purchased at the five and dime in Manhattan, Kansas when our family went while on vacation in the 60’s. It is the first Bible I remember owning for myself. I’m pretty sure it was a good deal or I wouldn’t have gotten it. It is white with a super tiny font (a word I didn’t know at the time). I’m guessing it is a 6-point font. I can hardly read it now but it is a pretty well-worn Bible. It is not written in. Back then, I didn’t write in my Bible. I write in my Bibles now but I didn’t then. I didn’t know that was something you did so I didn’t.

Back on the subject of wise decisions, I decided to stop doing life my way and to follow Jesus. I thought about it for about six months before and knew I needed to trust God with my life. So, I did. I told the pastor during a church service at Camp Poplar Springs in northwest Georgia on the evening of July 20, 1969. It was an historic day--f

or both me and for Neil Armstrong--best decision I ever made.

You can make history today by following Jesus. We are all sinners so we cannot conquer death ourselves, we needed someone to pay the price for our sin so we can be forgiven. Jesus did that by dying on the cross for all of us. When we recognize our personal need for Jesus, we call on him and ask Him to be in charge and to help us live.

You can read all about it in the Bible. If you don’t have much time, just read John 3. And then, make history.