flo.rankin@gaflnews.com



TIFTON – About 3,000 members of the General Missionary Baptist Convention of Georgia will begin arriving in town Sunday and should be here in full force by Monday night.

The convention will kick off with a musical program at 7 p.m. Monday at the Performing Arts Center at Tift County High School, attended by Mayor Paul Johnson, Board of Education President Richard Golden, Sheriff Gary Vowell, Police Chief Jim Smith and other local and church dignitaries.

Members of the host congregation, Friendship Missionary Baptist Church of Tifton, and other Second District churches will begin preparations for the convention on Saturday.

“We’ll be moving stuff, setting up offices, bringing in a piano and organ,” said Nita Ingram-Ludden of Friendship Missionary Baptist.

Ingram-Ludden said events planned during the week-long convention include a statewide basketball tournament at the TCHS gym, a scholarship banquet at Abraham Baldwin College, a youth rally, seminars, an oratorical contest and the crowning of a convention princess.

The Rev. Roger Drake and Springfield Missionary Baptist Church will host late-night evangelistic services beginning at 10 p.m. Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday.

The convention location moves around the state from year to year, Ingram-Ludden said. “It moves all over the state of Georgia, and they try to do it south, north, east and west,” she said. “So it won’t be back in the south for another three years.”

More than 500 hotel and motel rooms have already been booked for the event, which is one of the largest week-long conventions ever held here. Other attendees from nearby towns will drive in every day.



To contact city editor Florence Rankin, call 382-4321, ext. 209.