Nashville (BP)—Southern Baptist Convention President Johnny Hunt called for a “Great Commission resurgence,” a renewed zeal for proclaiming the gospel similar to the fervor that went into the fight for biblical orthodoxy in recent decades.

During his first presidential address to the SBC Executive Committee in Nashville Sept. 22, Hunt quoted Southeastern Baptist Theological Seminary President Daniel Akin who said, “When there was a theological drift, we corrected it. We must now correct our Great Commission drift.”

“When you win less people to Jesus, you’re drifting from the Great Commission,” Hunt indicated, referring to the mandate Jesus gave His disciples at the end of Matthew 28 and to Southern Baptists’ less than ideal baptism numbers.

Hunt also quoted Chuck Lawless, dean of Southern Baptist Theological Seminary’s Billy Graham School of Missions, Evangelism and Church Growth, who said, “We have stood faithfully for a message that we have chosen to keep to ourselves.”

As pastor of the Atlanta-area First Baptist Church of Woodstock, Ga., for 22 years, Hunt said he has learned that whatever is important to the leader is important to the people. As the new SBC president, he has set his sights on motivating the multitude to take as many people to heaven with them as possible.

“The Lord has greatly blessed Southern Baptists and our commitment to Him and to His Word and to His mission through the years,” Hunt noted. “However, we’d love to believe that the best is yet to come. ... If not, we have so far missed the major emphasis of what we’re all about.”

In order to generate a Great Commission resurgence, Hunt urged Southern Baptists to have a greater confidence in their message.

“Thank God for the gospel and what the gospel has done in our lives. I am indebted to Jesus and to the gospel,” he said.

In addition to a greater confidence in the message, Southern Baptists need a greater clarity in their mission if they are to experience a Great Commission resurgence, Hunt explained. He noted that Southern Baptists have about 5,500 missionaries serving overseas through the International Mission Board, but they only account for one missionary for every 1.6 million people in the world. Southern Baptists need to realize that if they are saved, they are individual missionaries, and most of them live in the third largest lost nation on earth, Hunt insisted.

Southern Baptists also need greater camaraderie in their Baptist family, he acknowledged. Former SBC president, Adrian Rogers, called for unity in diversity in the midst of the conservative shift years ago, and Hunt said it is time to sound the call again, this time to include those of a younger generation who may not dress, think or worship like those who make up the SBC’s majority.

“Some would say the younger generation is our problem. I’ll say this: If they’re our problem, we don’t have a future. I say they’re our future,” Hunt declared.

While embracing the younger generation, Southern Baptists also must unify with those who hold different theological stances on secondary issues that have tended to cause heated discussions within the Baptist family in recent years.

“The real enemy is Satan, the world and the flesh,” Hunt emphasized. “What we need to do is get back on the battlefield and engage once again our real opponent and adversary. Dr. Rogers was right. We need to be shoulder to shoulder back on the battlefield with the sword of the Spirit and the incomparable gospel of Jesus Christ.

“I’m ready to say let’s rally together for the express purpose of the Great Commission. Let’s all get under that banner. Let’s let every entity speak into it and say, ‘Here’s what we’re going to do to bring more people to faith in Jesus Christ,’” Hunt added. “There is a bottom line, and the bottom line is when you draw your last breath, we believers only have one question to ask around the coffin or at the cemetery: Did he know Jesus?”