The Army reconnaissance platoon leader, shot by a Viet Cong guerilla and believed dying, was piled, along with three other war casualties, onto a military helicopter. The severely wounded American officer, who would later become a Green Beret, struggled to survive and recommitted his life to Christ.
    In an interview with The Christian View, Dr. Bobby Welch, immediate past President of the Southern Baptist Convention, described that turning point in his life. Although he had been saved at the age of 16, led to the Lord by a preacher using a Gideon’s New Testament, he said that he had strayed from the Lord after going into college and then the military. The Bronze Star and Purple Heart recipient’s experience in combat -- his having almost died -- was a pivotal moment, a turnaround, in his life. "That brought me to the stark reality of how short life is, and that you don’t have time to play around with it," he said. "I saw the grace of God work in my life and save my life. I came to the conclusion that the most important thing we can ever do is share the Gospel with people who don’t know the Lord. I committed my life, even before my call to preach, because I had seen the power of the Gospel work in my life in the near-death experience in Vietnam and immediately after that, and it was overwhelmingly confirming to me that, just like Romans 1:16 says, God has the power, through the Gospel, to change anybody’s life, if they will trust in Him and believe in Him and commit to Him as their Saviour and Lord. That deep conviction of the power of the Gospel combined with the urgency of the realization that none of us has a guarantee to live until morning catapulted me and has been the driving force in my life. If a lost person dies before morning, he goes out into eternity and will miss heaven and go to hell. If I or any other believer dies before morning, our privilege and our opportunity to share Christ with friends, family, people around us, and people around the world has ended for us."
    Three years after the experience that turned his life around, Welch was convinced that the Lord was calling him to preach. 
    The Fort Payne, Alabama native had first attended the University of Alabama and then had transferred to play football on a scholarship at Jacksonville State University, where he earned his bachelor’s degree in business administration. He entered the New Orleans Baptist Theological Seminary, where he earned his Master of Theology degree. He later received an honorary doctorate from Palm Beach Atlantic University.
    While in seminary, he pastored the First Baptist Church of Norco (New Orleans Refinery Company). "That was interesting," he said, "in that I hadn’t been in church much at all when the Lord called me to preach." Also while in seminary, he had the privilege of being a ‘street preacher’ from the back of a Volkswagen van. "That was cutting-edge training for me," he said.
    After seminary, he was Assistant Pastor of Park Avenue Baptist Church in Nashville, Tennessee for two years, until 1974, at which time he became Pastor of the First Baptist Church of Daytona Beach, where he served until retiring in 2006. When asked what he enjoyed most about his years as a pastor, he said, "Seeing the Lord work dynamically in people’s lives in all of the different aspects of life, and coming to the realization that there is not anything in our lives that we could face that the Lord is not able to intervene and do great work."
    His advice for young pastors? "Stay in the Word, stay on your knees, and stay a personal soul winner, sharing the Gospel with everybody everywhere. And stay humble. Don’t get caught up in every fad that comes along. Stay with the basics. Trust the Lord. The Lord will have a way to work out whatever circumstances come your way. We’ve got an outstanding instructional book to follow, and that’s the Bible. It’s amazing that everybody ends up going back to the Bible, when we mess up something in our lives. The smart people stay with that from the beginning to the end. It covers all of the bases."
    As President of the Southern Baptist Convention, elected in 2004 and 2005, Welch toured every state in the contiguous United States by bus, plus Canada, and flew to Alaska and Hawaii, to advance the ‘Everyone Can! Kingdom Challenge’ for Southern Baptists to see one million people saved in a year. While on the bus tour, two places were at the top of his list. "I wanted to go back to the First Baptist Church of Fort Payne, Alabama, where I had been saved, baptized, married, licensed, ordained, and where I had baptized my mother and brother," he said. "And I wanted to go to the church that I pastored while I was in New Orleans, the First Baptist Church of Norco, where I ‘cut my teeth’ pastoring."
    In early 2007, Welch was named the first Strategist for Global Evangelical Relations with the Southern Baptist Convention’s Executive Committee. Serving as the Southern Baptists’ ‘ambassador of goodwill’ to conservative Christian leaders in foreign countries, Welch has been traveling extensively overseas in order to build relationships on every continent. In our own country, he continues to passionately proclaim the message of soul winning, preaching in churches and at conferences and convention meetings. He seeks to "continue the urging and encouraging cry, across the Southern Baptist Convention as well as to other evangelicals, to equip, train, and mobilize our members to share the Gospel with their family and friends and people around the world."
    Welch began sharing the Gospel first with his own family. He had not grown up in a Christian home. "Church did not interest us at all," he said. "We had other things to do." His father was a heavy equipment construction worker with the interstate highway system across the South, and was not home much. 
    "We grew up in a mill village," he said. "My Dad, Robert, and mother, Eloise, deeply loved me and my brother, Ronnie, and we always had plenty to eat and never worried about clothes on our back, but we were a working class family who worked very hard. I started working as soon as I could, with a paper route, and never quit working after I started.
    "When I got saved, the Lord began to work through my life to reach my brother and my mother. The first two people I baptized were my mother and my brother. Just prior to that, while I was in Vietnam, a layman had come to the hospital, where my father was dying of cancer, and had shared the Gospel with him, and he prayed to receive the Lord."

 
  
                                  Photo courtesy of James A. Smith, Sr., Florida Baptist Witness

At his retirement celebration from First Baptist Church of Daytona Beach, Florida, Dr. Bobby Welch holds his grandsons, Bo Welch and Zachary Zivitsky, while his granddaughters, Peyton Welch and Madison Zivitsky, sing "Jesus Loves Me."

    Welch co-created the FAITH Sunday School Evangelism Strategy utilized by many churches in the Southern Baptist Convention and overseas. Evangelism and the faith strategy of learning how to share the Gospel and how to teach others to do it, is also a major topic in many of the books he has written. "I have an affinity and affection for II Timothy 2:2, where it says to hand off to other people of faith what you’ve learned, with the understanding that they’re going to hand it off to others," he said. 
    "That is the multiplication factor in living out our life in Christ. It’s not enough just for each one to win one. We each need to win a ton now, because of the population explosion. And the only way to do that is to be deliberate and conscientious in multiplying your life in others, who would turn around and multiply their life in others. That’s the whole premise of the Faith Evangelism and Discipleship Strategy. What I find, most of the time, is that pastors and other people are very good at teaching others to do it, but it’s harder to go off into additional generations, where you teach others to teach others to teach others to teach others. I believe that’s where the New Testament secret lies, and that it’s an absolute must for Christians today."
    Sharing the Gospel is in his family history. Several generations back, his forefather Matt Culpepper was a circuit-riding Methodist preacher. "I ended up being an airplane-riding preacher," Welch said.
    Influences in his life have been many. "I was strongly influenced by Oswald Smith, who pastored the biggest church in Canada, although I never met him," said Welch. "I was also influenced by Adrian Rogers, Homer Lindsey, Jr., and the late evangelist Eddie Martin. Two pastors in my life, Bob Mowrey and Dan Ireland, were very important to me in my young days in the ministry. Elizabeth Elliot’s writings and, of course, her husband, Jim Elliott, were influential on my life. A number of people throughout my lifetime have been great influences on me."
    The greatest influence in his life has been his wife, Maudellen, with whom he fell in love at the age of 16 and married seven years later. They continue to live in Daytona Beach, Florida, and have a son, Matthew, a daughter, Haylee, and four grandchildren, Madison Zivitsky, Zach Zivitsky, Peyton Welch, and Bo Welch. 
    Welch would like to be remembered as someone who was faithful to the Lord, evident by being a consistent, earnest soul winner, and as someone who loved his family. "I want to be the kind of person," he said, "that, when I leave here, there would be some possibility that Jesus would say, ‘Well done, good and faithful servant.’ I pray that He’ll give me a little bit longer, and that I’ll do better in the future than I’ve done in the past."
    When asked what he would tell someone who does not know Jesus Christ as his personal Saviour, Welch responded, "If a person does not know for certain that, if they were to die tonight, they would go to be with Jesus and miss hell and go to heaven, I would say, ‘Immediately stop what you are doing, ask the Lord Jesus to make Himself known to you in a personal way, and pray and ask for forgiveness for your sins. Ask Him to come into your heart and life and absolutely revolutionize it, to save your soul and bring the resurrection power of God in your life like He worked in Lazarus’ life and in so many others. Set out to trust the Lord in everything, and make Him lord over your life, make Him controller over your life, and set out to live that life.’ That’s exactly what happened to my life.
    "The Gospel and how to know Jesus is very, very simple – Trust in the Lord in childlike faith."