Growth in evangelism and church planting were the focus of North American Mission Board President Kevin Ezell’s report to messengers to the 2026 Southern Baptist Convention Annual Meeting in Orlando on June 10.
Ezell reported that Southern Baptist churches baptized 263,075 people in 2025, the fifth year in a row that baptisms have gone up, and that this year’s Annie Armstrong Easter Offering was the second largest ever at $71.1 million.
Read more stories from the 2026 SBC Annual Meeting in Orlando.
“That is Southern Baptists saying, ‘We’re all in,’ and we’re incredibly grateful,” Ezell said.
In 2025, Southern Baptists added 951 new congregations across North America, including 699 church plants, 93 replants, 32 new campuses and 127 new affiliations, he reported.
“Each of these new churches is a place where someone who did not know Jesus last year can walk in and hear the gospel this Sunday,” Ezell said.
During the report, Ezell introduced Tyler and Ashley Martin, NAMB missionaries and church planters in Wyoming who were featured in Lifeway’s Illumination Station VBS curriculum this year. In 2025, the Martins were featured missionaries during the Week of Prayer for North American Missions, which came just days after Ashley was diagnosed with cancer.
Martin said he learned during that difficult time that “a Southern Baptist is the person that shows up when you can’t. When we couldn’t do things on our own, we were met with an unbelievable outpouring of love.”
The report also featured a video of a young woman, Nomi Kunkel, who grew up in the LDS Church in Salt Lake City. Kunkel came to know Christ through GenSend evangelism efforts and is now serving in New Orleans.
“God has worked in me, and He can now work through me so that I can pour His word over the world and love every single person that I come across,” Kunkel said.
Evangelism is not a campaign, it’s a culture that’s being built one conversation, one church, one city at a time, Ezell said. “The harvest is still abundant,” he said. “The lostness is still real. The harvest is waiting. Let’s get to work.”
