As Sammy Gilbreath introduced each speaker and musician at the 2020 State Evangelism Conference, it hit him just how long he’d been doing this.

He hadn’t had a conference in years that didn’t include pianist Frank Jones. When he introduced worship leader Daniel Crews, a solo artist from Starke, Florida, he realized he had been watching Crews’ young family grow up as he had involved him through the years in the evangelism conference.

Lasting relationships

And when he introduced Vance Pitman to speak, he talked about how he had watched him grow up in the Shoals area and eventually follow God out to Las Vegas to plant a church there — a church that now runs more than 4,000 in attendance.

“I didn’t realize just how long it had been until I was standing up and introducing people that I had a personal relationship with,” he said. “It wasn’t Don Wilton the speaker, it was Don Wilton I’d known all these years.”

But at this year’s State Evangelism Conference — his 23rd to organize — Gilbreath passed the baton to Daniel Wilson, the new director of the office of evangelism at the Alabama Baptist State Board of Missions (SBOM). (continue)

The article “Evangelism Conference Speakers Challenge Pastors, Churches to Look Towards Future” was first published on The Alabama Baptist.