Today, I am in Garden Grove, California speaking to the Converge Worldwide / Southwest Baptist Conference. For those of you uninitiated to all things Baptist, there are about 431,034 Baptist denominations. This one descends from the Swedish Pietist movement.

Wikipedia explains:

The Baptist General Conference grew out of the great revival of the 19th century, but its roots can be traced back to Swedish Pietism. In 1852, Gustaf Palmquist emigrated from Sweden to the United States. Forty-seven days after his arrival, he and three others organized a Swedish Baptist church in Rock Island, Illinois. Frederick Nilsson, who was instrumental in leading Palmquist to Baptist views, arrived in America the next year with 21 immigrants. Some of these united with the Rock Island church, while others organized a church at Houston, Minnesota. Nilsson traveled widely, founding and strengthening churches. Anders Wiberg was another pioneer among these churches from 1852 until 1855, when he returned to Sweden as a missionary.

Christian experience was a major emphasis among these Swedish Baptists, and they prospered from the awakenings in the 19th century. Immigration, aggressive evangelism and conversion through revivals brought rapid growth to the denomination. John Edgren founded the Swedish Baptist Seminary in Chicago, Illinois in 1871.

In 1879, when the Swedish churches had grown to 65 in number, they formed a General Conference. The members of these churches assimilated into American society and gradually lost their separate ethnic identity. By 1940, most churches were English-speaking. In 1945, the Swedish Baptist General Conference dropped "Swedish" from its name and became the Baptist General Conference of America. Swedish Baptists had maintained an alliance with the American Baptist Publication Society, American Baptist home and foreign missions, etc., and later the Northern Baptist Convention. Some Swedish Baptists expected to merge with that body, but the groups moved toward different developments of theological emphasis. The conservative Swedish Baptists pulled back from growing liberalism of the Northern Baptists, and in 1944 formed their own Board of Foreign Missions. This moved them toward independent existence, which they have maintained to the present.

Today, they are a newly renamed group, now called "Converge Worldwide," and have almost 1000 churches in the U.S.

In 2006, the BGC had 194,000 members in 950 churches in the United States. These churches are also organized into 13 district bodies: Columbia, Florida/Caribbean, Great Lakes, Heartland, Iowa, Mideast, Michigan, Minnesota, Midwest, Northern California, Northwest, Northeast, Rocky Mountain, and Southwest. There are a further 105 churches in Canada organized into 5 district bodies. These congregations cooperate together nationally through the Baptist General Conference of Canada.

I have had the privilege of consulting with them as they merged their national and international mission boards a few years ago (focused on the idea that "one worldwide mission" requires "one mission board").

Based on a research project I did for Leadership Network, I have said that they are the leading mid-sized to large denomination engage in North American church planting. (I will unpack that more in a new and forthcoming book, our in 2010, on church planting.)

Great folks and honored to spend the day with their leaders today.