LOUISVILLE, Ky. — Southern Baptist leaders are asking followers to put aside squabbles over political and social issues and look inward at a time when the nation's largest Protestant denomination is hoping to stop declining membership.

Leaders hope that energizing missionary efforts can help, and plan to focus on that at the group's annual meeting in Louisville beginning Tuesday.

"We are not a political organization," Jonathan Merritt, a Baptist pastor from Georgia and son of a former Southern Baptist Convention president, said in an e-mail message. "Too often, the evangelical movement has been distracted from our primary purpose by divisive political issues."

The convention has long made headlines for heated debates, dating back to power struggles in the 1970s and 1980s between moderates and conservatives that ended when moderates dropped out of SBC politics in the early 1990s. Over the past decade, the convention has taken positions opposing women pastors and gay rights.

"It's not to negate that we care about those other issues," said Daniel Akin, president of Southeastern Baptist Theological Seminary in Wake Forest, N.C. "Indeed we rightly have deep convictions about abortion, a growing concern for the poor, a growing concern for healthy marriages and families. But we're convinced the gospel of Jesus Christ is the answer to all those things."

Convention president Johnny Hunt has said he hoped the annual meeting would steer away from national issues, such as statements concerning the policies of President Obama's administration.

Hunt told the Baptist Press in May that though Obama's agenda gives many Christians "heartburn," he wishes "we would spend more time focusing on our health." Hunt declined to be interviewed for this story.

A failure to aggressively attract minorities has hurt Southern Baptist recruitment numbers, said David Key, director of Baptist studies at Emory University's Candler School of Theology in Atlanta.

An important indicator for the health of the denomination is new baptisms, which fell in 2008 for the fourth straight year to 342,198, a 1 percent drop and the lowest level since 1987, according to Lifeway Christian Resources, the publishing arm of the Nashville, Tenn.-based Southern Baptist Convention. Total membership of about 16.2 million was flat over the same period, falling by 38,482, or 0.2 percent.

Key said that Southern Baptists are starting to realize they're vulnerable.

Even with the emphasis on evangelism, the convention won't escape politics altogether.

Already one resolution proposed by a black Texas pastor, the Rev. Dwight McKissic, is asking the denomination to acknowledge the historical importance of Obama's electoral victory despite the convention's opposition to his policies.

"The odds are overwhelming that there will be a resolution on President Obama," said Akin, chairman of the committee that forwards resolutions to the floor for a vote. But Akin said the committee would attempt to steer away from divisive political subjects.

Recent SBC annual meetings have embraced such topics, including a boycott of The Walt Disney Co. for offering domestic partner benefits to gay employees, a definition of gender roles that prohibits women from being pastors while calling for wives to "submit" to husbands, and even disapproval of allowing members who drink to serve in leadership positions.