After a slew of controversies, the SBC turns to a low-key leader to keep things cool

CHARLOTTE, N.C. (RNS) — As he stepped up into the old-fashioned wooden pulpit on a recent Sunday, Pastor Clint Pressley wasted no time.

After quickly thanking the student discipleship minister who had brought many of the church’s Camp Paradise teens to the 11 a.m. service at his church, Hickory Grove Baptist, Pressley turned to the task at hand.

“Mark chapter 14,” he intoned in his Southern drawl. “If you’re a guest with us, we read the Bible and then we just talk about the Bible. You’re gonna find it feels a lot like a Bible study. Mark 14 starting in verse one …”

After relating the first 10 verses that tell the story of the woman who anoints Jesus with a bottle of expensive perfume, he drives home the passage’s lesson with a series of questions: “You have one life to live,” he said. “Pour it out. Have you done what you could? What’s holding you back? I want your life to be all-out devotion to God.”

This was Pressley’s third sermon of the day. He preached the 8 a.m. service, drove 13 miles to the church’s second campus to preach the 10 a.m. service, and then drove back to the main campus for the 11 a.m. service.

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