Pastor Bart Barber, president of the Southern Baptist Convention, preaches from the pulpit of the First Baptist Church of Farmersville, Texas, on Sunday, Sept. 25, 2022. For nearly a quarter-century, Barber enjoyed relative obscurity as a pastor in this town of 3,600, about 50 miles northeast of Dallas. That changed in June as delegates to the Southern Baptist Convention’s annual meeting in California, chose Barber to lead the nation’s largest Protestant denomination at a time of major crisis. (AP Photo/Audrey Jackson)
