| abstract | - The First Baptist Church of Jacksonville is a large Southern Baptist church located in downtown Jacksonville, Florida. At 28,000 members, it is the third largest of the 43,000 churches in the Southern Baptist Convention. Upon the retirement of pastor Jerry Vines in January 2006, Dr. Mac Brunson relocated from the First Baptist Church of Dallas to become the church's new senior pastor. Former pastor Jerry Vines, along with his well-known co-pastor Homer G. Lindsay, Jr. (1927 – 2000), famously helped shift the Southern Baptist Convention to become a more conservative and fundamentalist group. [1] Vines also received national attention in June 2002 for his controversial statements regarding Islam.
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