Joanna Allhands: The real takeaway from the Baptist convention.

There’s a lot of talk about the future of the Southern Baptist Convention, which held its annual meeting in Phoenix this week. The nation’s largest Protestant denomination is adding hundreds of churches and raking in billions of dollars in donations, according to Christianity Today.

Greg Laurie — the popular evangelist whose Harvest America crusade attracted 40,000 to University of Phoenix Stadium over the weekend — announced after that event that he was joining the denomination. Many would call that success. Yet Southern Baptists also are struggling to stem the tide of declining memberships and baptisms. Members are increasingly divided over President Donald Trump and the church’s role in politics.

And the tension was palpable at this week’s conference, where a resolution to disavow the “alt-right” divided attendees and brought harsh words from some leaders. (The convention eventually OK’d a condemnation on Wednesday).

If you attend church regularly, you probably have heard similar refrains.

There’s a lot of uncertainty in this time of deep division about what it means to be an evangelical, much less a Christ follower. Many folks worry that the church is failing America, that we’ve focused so much on what doesn’t matter and what (or who) we’re against that we’ve made the core message of our faith completely irrelevant to an entire generation.

There is plenty of evidence to suggest that is so, from falling church attendance to the meteoric rise of the “none of the aboves” who eschew anything having to do with organized religion.

Clearly, Southern Baptists are using their conference in Phoenix for some soul-searching. And that can be a good thing — but only if the debates are rooted in a few basic truths.

Jesus tasked his followers with two big things: loving God with all their heart, soul, strength and mind, and loving others — even those with whom we disagree — as ourselves.

That was his plan for us: to “make disciples of all nations” with the simple tool of love. And nothing else.

Now, there were a few verses in the Book of Acts where the church worked perfectly. Everyone agreed. They shared their possessions. They took care of the widows and the orphans. And they multiplied exponentially.

But the rest of that book — and, well, pretty much most of the Bible — shows how much we messed the other stuff up. How we argued about politics and religion and other people, and generally did things that God didn’t want us to do.

And yet God continued to work, now matter how many times his people failed him. He’s kind of awesome like that.

That’s the message I hope Southern Baptists — and all Christ followers — take away from the headlines out of this week’s convention. We can disagree about who’s qualified to be a pastor, whether the president has good morals and whether there should be an altar call at each service. That’s all minor stuff.

What ultimately matters is how much God loves us, despite how much we mess things up.

Our mission is simply to love God and love others. And know that God will take care of the rest.