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Regular Session, 2011 ENROLLED
SENATE RESOLUTION NO. 123
BY SENATOR WILLARD-LEWIS
A RESOLUTION
To commend Reverend Fred Luter Jr., Senior Pastor of Franklin Avenue Baptist Church in
New Orleans, on being elected first vice president of the Southern Baptist
Convention.
WHEREAS, on Tuesday, June 14, 2011, Reverend Fred Luter Jr., the Senior Pastor
of Franklin Avenue Baptist Church in New Orleans, was elected as first vice president of the
predominantly white Southern Baptist Convention at the national convention held in
Phoenix, Arizona, marking the first time that an African American has been part of the
church's top-level leaders; and
WHEREAS, the Southern Baptist Convention is a sixteen million member
denomination, the largest Protestant denomination in the United States; and
WHEREAS, Pastor Fred Luter Jr., who was a commodities clerk, not even formally
ordained when he began his ministry in 1983 gaining experience as a street preacher in the
Lower Ninth Ward of New Orleans; and
WHEREAS, he took to the Franklin Avenue Baptist Church pulpit in 1986, where
the formerly white church congregation had left for the suburbs, and the church having only
about sixty members and near extinction; and
WHEREAS, in 1997, Pastor Luter was ordained and installed as pastor on the same
day; and
WHEREAS, the congregation grew, and although it became predominantly black,
like its changing neighborhood, it maintained its Southern Baptist Convention affiliation;
and
WHEREAS, Pastor Luter was the first preacher of color to address the annual
convention when he was the keynote speaker at the 2001 national convention in New
Orleans, and in 1992, became the first African American elected to the executive board of SR NO. 123 ENROLLED
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the Louisiana Baptist Convention; and
WHEREAS, the Franklin Avenue Baptist Church congregation is one of an estimated
3,400 predominantly black congregations among the more than 45,700 churches affiliated
with the Southern Baptist Convention; and
WHEREAS, under Pastor Fred Luter's vision and leadership, the Franklin Avenue
Baptist Church grew from a membership of sixty five members to a membership of seven
thousand plus worshipers; and
WHEREAS, the church was destroyed by floods after Hurricane Katrina in 2005 and
in the following months and years, under the leadership of Pastor Luter and with the
invaluable assistance and efforts of many volunteers, the congregation has grown to about
5,000, one of the largest Southern Baptist churches in Louisiana; and
WHEREAS, the church congregation is in the midst of a major capital campaign to
build a new church, its third generation, in eastern New Orleans; and
WHEREAS, the 2012 annual convention will again be held in New Orleans and it
is hoped that Pastor Luter will be elected president of the organization at that time.
THEREFORE, BE IT RESOLVED that the Senate of the Legislature of Louisiana
does hereby commend Reverend Fred Luter Jr., Senior Pastor of Franklin Avenue Baptist
Church in New Orleans, on being elected first vice president of the Southern Baptist
Convention.
BE IT FURTHER RESOLVED that a copy of this Resolution be transmitted to
Pastor Fred Luter Jr.
PRESIDENT OF THE SENATE