Willy Rice

ORLANDO (BP) – Florida pastor Willy Rice has been elected SBC president. Rice follows North Carolina pastor Clint Pressley, who served two terms in the role. Rice received 5,217 votes […]

ORLANDO, Florida — On Tuesday, June 9, 2026, Willy Rice, senior pastor of Calvary Church in Clearwater, won the election for Southern Baptist Convention president by 1,396 votes.  According to […]

CLEARWATER, Fla. (BP) – Florida pastor Willy Rice announced his intentions to be nominated as a candidate for Southern Baptist Convention president at the 2026 SBC Annual Meeting in Orlando. […]

Willy Rice, pastor of Calvary Church in Clearwater, delivered the closing message at the 2024 Florida Baptist State Convention annual meeting and urged attendees to remain faithful in a society increasingly at odds with Christian values.

In the closing sermon of the 2022 gathering of the Florida Baptist State Convention, Willy Rice, senior pastor of Calvary Baptist Church in Clearwater, urged messengers to “keep the kingdom in view.”

A public baptism including more than 130 changed lives is significant on its own. But an onlooker’s response may be the biggest memory for Matt Laughter, worship pastor for the East Lake campus of Calvary Church.

Willy Rice, pastor of Calvary Church in Clearwater, Fla., will be nominated by Clint Pressley, pastor of Hickory Grove Baptist, for the president of the Southern Baptist Convention this summer at the 2022 SBC Annual Meeting in Anaheim, Calif.

Acknowledging “we all know our Baptist family is in a mess,” Willy Rice urged the church “to get our eyes off ourselves and to fix our eyes upon Jesus.”

In delivering the Convention Sermon at the 2021 Southern Baptist Convention, Florida Baptist pastor Willy Rice implored Southern Baptists to go for gold, silver and precious jewels, not the wood, hay and straw that has its short-term advantages but little benefit in terms of longevity.

Florida pastor Willy Rice is calling on his brothers and sisters in Christ to undergird him in prayer as he prepares to deliver the Convention Sermon during the 2021 Southern Baptist Convention in Nashville, Tenn.