Southern Baptists to Focus on Inner City

ATLANTA —  The president of the Southern Baptists has called on members to recruit in inner cities and shun “touchy-touchy, feely-feely” worship and creative biblical interpretation.

The Baptists, the nation’s largest Protestant denomination, recently wrapped up their annual convention at which they endorsed an ambitious plan to evangelize in the nation’s cities--a departure for an overwhelmingly white church whose members are found mostly in suburbs, small towns and rural areas--particularly in the South.

The Baptists will concentrate their energies in Chicago and Phoenix in 2000, Las Vegas and Boston in 2001, and Philadelphia and Seattle in 2002, the convention decided.

Despite his call for more diversity in church membership, convention President Paige Patterson made clear that he does not believe it should be accomplished with modern methods of preaching. He railed against pastors who indulge in “12-minute sermonettes generated by the ‘felt needs’ of an assembled cast of postmodern listeners augmented by drama and multiple repetitions of touchy-touchy, feely-feely music. . . .”