Johnson Ferry Baptist Church pastor Bryant Wright, the founding minister for the large East Cobb congregation and a former president of the Southern Baptist Convention, announced Sunday he intends to step away from the post he has held for 37 years.
He’s not calling it a retirement, because he would like to continue to be involved in the ministry in some other capacity.
But for the last year and a half, Wright said he has been thinking about when the time would come for him to step away from leading the church, which has more than 8,000 members.
Appearing in a church-produced video with his wife Anne that was released Sunday, Wright said that it was during this past spring that “God clarified that the timing had come.”
He did not announce a timetable for his departure but said he would stay until a successor is named. Wright said that in January, he will ask church elders to appoint a search committee to begin the hiring process.
In his sermon on Sunday, Wright said he spoke about Moses tapping Joshua to succeed him, recalling an Old Testament tale from the Book of Deuteronomy.
“Unlike Moses,” Wright said, “I have no idea who God is going to choose for this particular role.”
His wife Anne said at first, she wasn’t sure. “I guess I just didn’t want to hear it,” she said, thinking he needed a vacation, and that a sabbatical “was going to be the answer to everything.”
In August, Wright said he went to the church elders with his decision to step away and to begin the succession process.
They came to Johnson Ferry in 1981, when the church met in a doctor’s office and had 20 members. It’s grown to one of the biggest churches in metro Atlanta and has extended far beyond its sprawling grounds on Johnson Ferry Road.
In 1992, Wright also started Right from the Heart Ministries, which places multimedia messages on secular outlets. The church also operates the Johnson Ferry Christian Academy, which enrolls around 400 K-12 students.
Wright, a native of South Carolina, served in 2011-12 as the president of the Southern Baptist Convention, the country’s largest Protestant denomination with around 16 million members.
During that time, he worked to forge ties with black Baptist churches and to incorporate more of them into the historically white SBC.
In 2013, Wright ended Johnson Ferry’s sponsorship of Boy Scouts programs when the scouting organization allowed openly gay scouts.
More recently, Wright was interviewed by “60 Minutes” about Christian response to the Syrian refugee crisis, since Johnson Ferry has been involved in resettlement activities here.
On Sunday, he asked for prayers for the congregation and for “the right decision” to be made about who will lead Johnson Ferry in its future.
“Let’s make the most of the time that we have together,” he said.
“It’s tough to let go, but we’re going to have to let go . . .. Pray that God will lead us to the right man.”
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