Preaching from Ephesians 4, Clint Pressley shared with the Southern Baptist Convention Executive Committee Monday evening (Sept. 22) what it looks like to “Walk Worthy,” which is the theme of the 2026 SBC Annual Meeting in Orlando.
Pressley, who is in his second term as SBC president, noted that Southern Baptists must keep their focus on reaching the lost while strengthening churches.
“We want to make sure that we as Southern Baptists do not lose sight of what we do, and that is reaching people with the gospel of Jesus Christ,” he said. “That’s why we’re together. Otherwise we don’t even need to be in a room together. We have a genuine mission which is to win people to Christ.”
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In order for Southern Baptists to stay focused on the mission, they must be vigilant about the following things.
1. Doctrine.
Southern Baptists must be “strong about what we believe,” Pressley noted. While “we don’t want to be on a witch hunt,” he added, “we want to love our confession of faith, the Baptist Faith and Message 2000. We want to affirm it with gladness and joy with seriousness, and be vigilant.”
2. Clear about the gospel.
“We need to be clear on the gospel. …We want to not only be able to articulate that, we want to be extremely clear on what it means for people to get saved and how they are saved,” he said.
3. Careful about pride.
Christian leaders need to be able to “laugh at one’s self,” he noted.
“To build relationships. To be able to have disagreements, but do it in a way that honors the Lord Jesus and maintains fellowship,” he said. “As a Southern Baptist Convention, we do have a mission in front of us. But we don’t get to do that mission if we don’t actually stay together. And the way we stay together is to be careful about pride.”
4. Focused on self-control.
“God has called us to a great mission, a great gospel, but that doesn’t’ go without living like a Christians, acting like Christians, treating one another like Christians,” he noted.
5. Patient with one another.
“To actually think the best of each other,” Pressley said. “What a good thing when somebody actually extends the benefit of the doubt. … Allow for some mistakes. We’re going to make them.”
6. Concerned for one another.
When tragedy hits, he noted, one of the beautiful things that happens is the support of the Christian community. “They might disagree with you, (but they will) come and stand with you. They display an extreme concern for one another. Let you and I live with an extreme concern for one another.”
7. Extremely committed to our fellowship.
For Southern Baptists, the Convention should be something they’re invested in, “something we believe in,” he said.
8. Eager to maintain the unity.
Pressley said Christians needs to be “eager to keep (unity), not eager to tear it down, not eager to destroy it, not eager to chunk rocks.” While there are things to criticize, he noted, believers should “be unified, supernatural unification around one truth that is the gospel.”
He closed with, “The gospel keeps us together — and our gospel-centered churches will keep us together as a Convention,” he said. “Let us walk in a manner worthy of the calling to which we have been called.”
EDITOR’S NOTE — This story was written by Shawn Hendricks and originally published by The Baptist Paper.
