Among other Southern Baptist leaders on tap were Willie McLaurin, interim president and CEO of the SBC Executive Committee; Leo Endel, executive director of the Minnesota-Wisconsin Baptist Convention; Jamie Dew, president, New Orleans Baptist Theological Seminary; Todd Unzicker, executive director and treasurer of the Baptist State Convention of North Carolina, and Valerie Carter Smith, executive director and treasurer of the Woman’s Missionary Union of Virginia.
In other evening sermons, Breonus Mitchell, lead pastor of Mount Gilead Baptist Church in Nashville, Tenn., presented Malachi 2:17-3:6 as a court case, with the Israelites as the plaintiffs waging a complaint against God.
“The Israelites have taken God to court, and they have charged God with being unfair and unfaithful. They say that the God of host has abandoned His covenant relationship with the children of Israel, because everybody around them is living their best life while the children of Israel are living their worst life,” Mitchell preached July 20.
“In reality, tonight, do we really want God to be fair? Next time you open your mouth, talking about what you don’t deserve and how somebody else got what you deserved, you wished you had something else, go back down memory lane,” Mitchell encouraged. “Where would you be, what would you be, what ministry would you have, what church would you pastor, what marriage would you have, what children would you have, what money would be in the bank, what health would be in your body if God was fair?”
Fred “Chip” Luter, son of Franklin Avenue Baptist Church Senior Pastor Fred Luter, focused on the historical truth of the resurrection in the final sermon of the week July 21, saying that to refute the Lord’s resurrection in the face of all the historical evidence would be like refuting the tragedy of the attacks of September 11, 2001, that killed thousands, or the COVID-19 pandemic that all the world experienced.
Jesus appeared to 500 men and women after the resurrection, and his body has never been found, but armored guards contended that Jesus’ disciples stole His body from the tomb.
“Do you know that the original conspiracy theory started after the resurrection?” asked Luter, Franklin Avenue’s senior associate pastor. “Can you imagine these armored soldiers saying, ‘Oh, His disciples came and stole the body?’ Let me just give a little context. Does anybody remember the kind of disciples Jesus had?” They were fishermen, tax collectors and physicians. “Can you imagine? Really bro? They stole the body?
“But here’s the thing. If you can buy the lie, you don’t have to submit to the truth.”
Much of the conference will be available on demand beginning July 25, with access available for purchase at lifeway.com/blackchurchconference. More than 24 hours of content will be available until July 2023, Croston said.
“There was a recent study that reported that the majority of people do not watch TV by time anymore, but via recordings and OnDemand,” Croston said, “so this is right in line with the new viewing patterns of people.”
Registration for the 2023 BCLFC, scheduled for July 17-21, is open at ridgecrestconferecnecenter.com.
This article originally appeared here.
 July 18-22 at Ridgecrest Conference Center in Ridgecrest, N.C.){kind=link}