In fact, the last time the SBC’s annual meeting was held in Louisville was 1959, when the school turned 100 years old.
“It was time to have it back and we could make the logistics of that work,” Logan noted.
And with only 52 weeks to go before thousands of Southern Baptists descend on the River City, there is plenty of work to be done—both for the convention planners and Southern Seminary.
“This is a huge event for Kentucky and for Louisville,” said Albert Mohler, president of Southern Baptist Theological Seminary. “It really is meaningful to have the convention coming back. … It is a wonderful opportunity for Kentucky Baptists to tell the story and to welcome the entire Southern Baptist Convention to Louisville.”
Logan indicated that preliminary arrangements have already begun. This includes obtaining signed contracts with both the convention site and hotel. Those two factors will give Louisville a distinctive feel compared to past host cities like Indianapolis and San Antonio, he noted.
“The convention’s going to be different for our messengers than they’ve had it in the past,” he said.
Louisville logistics
According to Logan, with the need for at least 350,000 square feet of floor space to host an SBC annual meeting, the Kentucky Fair & Exposition Center—commonly referred to as the fairgrounds—was the only choice as a convention site in Louisville.
Although the location provides ample space for the meeting, exhibit hall and breakout rooms, the sprawling layout of the fairgrounds poses a challenge for convention organizers.
The main challenge: shuttles—a lot of them.
“We always run shuttles in a city. We did in Indianapolis, even though many of the hotels were (within) walking distance,” Logan recalled. “But in Louisville, we’re going to have to shuttle pretty much all hotels.”
That includes the convention hotel, the Executive West, which despite its location, “you still have to go across four lanes of traffic and … the parking lot,” Logan observed.
Initially, the Executive West was to share convention hotel duties with its neighbor, the Executive Inn. That all changed when plans were announced last year to demolish the Executive Inn and renovate the Executive West, rebranding it as a Crowne Plaza Hotel. The work is expected to be completed well ahead of next year’s June meeting. However, Logan said, the project takes a huge bite out of the number of hotel rooms available near the convention site, meaning many messengers may be forced to stay in hotels as far away as 10 miles.
Yet another logistical headache—which was certainly not an issue in Indianapolis—is the scarcity of restaurants within reasonable distance of the Kentucky Fair & Exposition Center, Logan noted.
“We’re going to have to do our best to give them food options there in the convention hall so maybe they’ll stay,” he explained. “You always run the danger (of) if they leave, they may not come back.”
Regardless of the logistical issues, Logan said that convention planning teams are moving forward and a chairman for the local arrangements committee—which coordinates and oversees many of the volunteers at the annual meeting—has been chosen.
Daniel Hatfield, vice president for student services and accreditation at Southern Seminary, will handle those duties for the Louisville gathering. He said his most important role is staffing the numerous subcommittees and enlisting as many as 400 volunteers to work throughout the two-day annual meeting.
“There are no innovations that I have to develop or anything quirky to Louisville, but rather to fill those slots,” Hatfield noted.
Logan pointed out that by the time October rolls around, the local arrangements committee will begin reaching out to churches in the Louisville area to fill subcommittees ranging from ushers to transportation to child care. By January 2009, those groups will begin enlisting volunteers, which according to Logan, numbered more than 900 for this year’s meeting in Indianapolis.
Hatfield said he intends to recruit a lot of Southern Seminary students to serve on the local arrangemetns subcommittees as a way for them to participate in a “singular opportunity during their studies.” He also called the annual meeting a “historic moment” for the seminary.
“It’s a unique privilege for us to showcase our contribution to denominational life and we want to seize the moment and bring people to campus,” Hatfield explained.
Campus renovations
According to Mohler, inviting Southern Baptists to the Southern Seminary campus has prompted a $6 million improvement project which includes a 14,000-square-foot pavilion “that will become the new front door for the seminary,” he said.
In addition to the pavilion, the school is designing a new gated main entrance onto campus; an expansion of the seminary’s Founder’s Café; a new commons area to be named in honor of former seminary president Edgar Young Mullins; and improved signage on campus.
“All across campus you see major renovation, beautification and historic preservation projects going on,” Mohler said. “This campus is a jewel. Very few theological institutions have anything like the campus that Southern Seminary enjoys.”
Part of the festivities honoring Southern’s sesquicentennial during the SBC annual meeting will include an open house on campus during the Wednesday afternoon break. The next day, after the annual meeting has adjourned, the school will host a “major reunion for alumni and friends … to celebrate the seminary and its history,” Mohler noted.
The Southern president might even have had the opportunity to pull double duty at next year’s SBC annual meeting—both as convention president and head of the seminary. Health issues derailed that plan earlier this year after doctors found a tumor in Mohler’s colon. Doctors later removed it and found it not to be cancerous.
Becoming SBC president this year would have given Mohler the opportunity to preside over next year’s Louisville gathering. While he admitted a “tinge of disappoinment” in not fulfilling that role, Mohler acknowledged relief that health issues likely kept him from taking on too much responsibility.
“In retrospect, God’s timing—which is always perfect—I now understand to have prevented me from being in a situation which I might not have been able to do all the things I would want to do for the seminary during those days,” he said.
Western Recorder issue date: June 24, 2008
|