Peninsula Enterprise

First Southwide Convention Of Bible Classes

Organized Bible Classes in the Baptist Sunday Schools of Virginia are arranging to send a large delegation to Mobile, Ala., February 7, 8 and 9 for the first Southwide convention of Bible Class representatives ever held, it is announced by the Baptist headquarters in Richmond, Va. The railroads have granted reduced rates for the occasion, and Dr. J. T. Watts, state Sunday School secretary, Old Dominion Trust Building, Richmond has been named transportation manager for this state. Dr. P. A. Dixon, of Roanoke, president of the Virginia Federation of Bible Classes, will represent Virginia on the program.

The immediate aim of the convention is to more fully enlist all the Baptist forces of the South in personal soul winning and all other Christian work in the local churches. While there were practically 250,000 baptisms among Southern Baptists last year this convention will speak to arouse the local Bible classes in the task of enrolling 500,000 Baptists in winning at least one soul to Christ during 1922.

At present there are thousands of unenlisted Baptists in the South and there will be projected at the convention a movement to conduct during the fall a complete survey in every community in the South that will reveal the unchurched Baptists and the possibilities for evangelism among the unsaved, this survey to be conducted by the members of the organized Bible classes.

The most experienced and successful Sunday School workers of the South have been engaged to address the convention and discuss class methods, while some of the special speakers are William Jennings Bryan, Roger W. Babson, the noted statistician, and John D. Sage, president of the Union Central Life Insurance Company.

Secretary of Labor, John J. Davis, has tentatively accepted an invitation to deliver an address.