JACKSONVILLE, Fla. — Tommy Green has declared his retirement following serving Florida Baptists as executive director-treasurer because June 2015.
Green shared his ideas to retire, helpful Dec. 31, 2024, with Florida Baptists’ State Board of Missions, the convention’s governing overall body, throughout its often scheduled conference in Jacksonville Thursday (April 4).
He said that he and his wife Karen have prayed about the retirement choice. “We have a terrific peace that this is the time — it is the ideal time,” he stated.
Reflecting on his tenure serving Florida Baptists as executive director-treasurer, Environmentally friendly stated, “This has been a single of the most joyous and blessed encounters of my ministry. To have the privilege of serving our churches and our pastors in this way has been substantially extra of a blessing to me than to them.”
As he retires, Eco-friendly mentioned that his prayer is that Florida Baptists “know how significantly I like them, treatment for them, how grateful I am for all of our church buildings, all of our pastors.”
He emphasised, “The Florida Baptist Conference is not about Tommy Eco-friendly at all. It’s not about a man or woman it is about the Lord Jesus Christ. I hope we have honored Christ and brought glory to Christ by means of all of the a long time that I have had the privilege of serving in this way.”
Environmentally friendly explained he thinks, “The biggest days of ministry for Florida Baptists are however forward.”
‘Convention exists to provide churches’
As Florida Baptists’ 10th government director-treasurer, Inexperienced has emphasised that the “convention exists to provide the churches,” stating that God claimed, “I will establish My church,” not “I will develop My conference.”
If a state conference is not observed as “a valued partner” with community churches, he reported, the conference then will become “irrelevant.”
To that conclude, Environmentally friendly purposefully led the condition convention to “align with the passions of our church buildings,” which include church planting, church revitalization, baptisms, missions engagement and offering via the Cooperative Program and Maguire Condition Mission Providing. Individuals 6 passions led to Green’s vision, Challenge 2025, presented in 2019 as a 5-calendar year program to spur Florida Baptist churches to achieve a new stage of determination to get to the nation’s quickest- expanding condition with the Gospel.
Florida Baptists, he said, “want to see the kingdom mature, and they notice it can take all of us to do that.
“To see the unity, the motivation that Florida Baptists have to achieve Florida for Christ has been incredibly encouraging.”
‘Right Beside You’
The Florida Baptist Conference, beneath Green’s management, embraced a “Right Beside You” partnership method with local churches. When Environmentally friendly took the Florida Baptist helm in 2015, he practically promptly began to restructure the point out convention’s ministries to be “right beside” the area church with a personalised, decentralized and regionalized strategy to churches.
Regional catalysts are positioned all over the point out to provide local churches as a result of relationships and means. In the course of Green’s tenure, close to $36 million has been furnished by the state conference straight to area churches and associations for kingdom ministry.
Cooperative Program offering
Yet another one particular of Green’s initially ways as government director-treasurer was to lead Florida Baptists to vote, at the 2015 Florida Baptist Condition Conference once-a-year meeting, to send out 51 p.c of once-a-year economical receipts from its churches to the Southern Baptist Convention’s Cooperative Application and keep 49 % in the point out. That final decision, described by Eco-friendly as a “driving missions mandate,” was created at a time when the ordinary point out Baptist convention retained about 58 percent of its CP receipts. Due to the fact that time, numerous other state conventions have adopted suit, increasing the proportion of monetary gifts sent as a result of the Cooperative Plan.
By the many years of Green’s leadership, the Florida Baptist Convention has obtained close to $259,000,000 in Cooperative Application items from Florida Baptist church buildings and forwarded additional than $130,000,000 to the Southern Baptist Convention for mission and ministry brings about.
In 2017 when the Florida Baptist Conference bought its former Baptist Making in downtown Jacksonville, a examine for $3,136,500, representing 51 percent of the sale rate of $6,150,000, was specified by means of the Cooperative Software, over and higher than the condition convention’s standard CP giving.
“Generosity is normally honored by the Lord and blessed by the Lord,” Environmentally friendly explained.
Baptisms
In the course of Green’s tenure, extra than 210,000 persons have been baptized by Florida Baptists, with about 29,000 baptized in 2023.
“Florida Baptists are pacesetters in the region of evangelism,” Eco-friendly explained. “Florida Baptists have led the complete Southern Baptist Conference in baptisms 12 months following yr after yr.”
He noted that 12-15 % of all baptisms in the Southern Baptist Convention are in Florida Baptist church buildings.
Even as main hurricanes have torn paths of destruction through community communities and as the pandemic shut down churches and wreaked havoc, Florida Baptists responded to prospects to share the Gospel. “The therapeutic of the local community comes as a result of the community church,” Environmentally friendly stated.
It is “the heart and need of our churches to be salt and light, even amid darkish hours, to shine the Gospel brightly.”
Other priorities
Further Florida Baptist Conference priorities during Green’s tenure include things like:
- A strategic partnership with the North American Mission Board’s Send Network for church planting in Florida. The partnership delivers a 50/50 split concerning the two entities to provide fiscal assist for new church buildings for 4 years. Close to 500 church buildings have been planted in Florida since 2015. Florida Baptists’ Maguire State Mission Presenting has been refocused, returning to its first intent, so that all funds acquired are earmarked for church planting.
- Continuation of longstanding partnerships with Cuba and Haiti. The partnership prioritizes area church buildings foremost in these mission endeavors.
- Enhanced procedures and education products to prioritize sexual abuse prevention, reporting and survivor care. The Florida Baptist Conference is partnering with the Evangelical Council for Abuse Prevention, which is offered to do the job with Florida Baptist church buildings to create a comprehensive technique for little one defense and abuse avoidance.
- Founded a church-to-church ministry partnership with the State Conference of Baptists in Ohio.
- Assisted Florida Baptists in launching methods to react to and care for increasing quantities of immigrants in the condition.
- Established the groundwork for a regionalized pastors’ wives community in Florida.
- Established point out conference accreditation by the Evangelical Council of Monetary Accountability.
Prior to accepting the function as Florida Baptists’ govt director-treasurer, Eco-friendly served as pastor of First Baptist Church in Brandon, April 1996-June 2015 Very first Baptist Church in Buford, Georgia, 1988-1996 Franklin Creek Baptist Church in Pascagoula, Mississippi, 1985-1988 and Chesbrough Baptist Church in Kentwood, Louisiana, 1982-1985.
An Alabama indigenous, Inexperienced holds doctor of theology and grasp of divinity levels from New Orleans Baptist Theological Seminary and an undergraduate degree from Samford University in Birmingham. In 2013 Green was awarded the Alumni of the Yr from New Orleans Seminary.
He and his spouse Karen have 3 sons: John Inexperienced IV and his wife Katherine of Knoxville, Tennessee Matthew Environmentally friendly and his wife Nathalie of Chattanooga, Tennessee and Philip Green, who passed absent Aug. 28, 2023, at the age of 41 and 4 grandchildren.
As he seems to be towards his retirement, Green claimed, “I am thankful that God has brought together a family members of churches that have a laser concentrate of reaching Florida and outside of for Christ.”
The submit Florida Baptists’ Tommy Inexperienced announces retirement appeared to start with on Biblical Recorder.
