Frank Page was out mowing his lawn one day a few weeks ago when God spoke to him.

Page, pastor of Taylors First Baptist Church, had been wrestling with a decision he had to make -- a decision over something that at first had seemed ridiculous to him: whether to run for president of the Southern Baptist Convention.

But there, atop a red Troy-Bilt riding mower in front of his Eastside parsonage, he had his burning bush experience.

"The Lord just grabbed my heart, and I told the Lord I did not want to do it," Page said in an interview with The Greenville News on Friday in a room where his wife, Dayle, teaches piano lessons.

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"And the Lord told me very clearly, it doesn't matter whether I liked it or not. It's what he wanted me to do -- to at least run to get things discussed."

Rather than getting "smushed like a bug" as he had predicted when the executive director of the Missouri Baptist Convention asked him to run, Page was the winner in a three-way race for the presidency of the nation's largest Protestant denomination.

He defeated a handpicked successor and overturned the convention establishment that has run things since ousting moderates in the 1980's.

Page, 53, believes there's a reason for this in God's plan for the 16-million-member religious group that has been a driving force in the nation's conservative swing in recent years.

That reason, he says, is to show that Southern Baptists aren't just people who are "against" things. It's to show that they are very much "for" something very wonderful that overshadows all the negativity.

"I think at this point what I would say is that I want the nation to hear that Southern Baptists are a caring people," he said when asked what message he most wants to get out.

"We are too often known for what we tell people not to do. And I hope to put a very positive face on to say there are some wonderful things out there.

"There's a great message of help and hope and I want to get that out there." A 'regular pastor'Page's victory as an outsider represents a change in tone and emphasis but not in basic beliefs, he said.

He believes in the inerrancy of the Bible. "I'm just not mad about it," he said.

"There is indeed a mean-spirited form of (fundamentalism) that I absolutely reject," he said.

Page defeated two better-known candidates, the Rev. Ronnie Floyd of Springdale, Ark., and the Rev. Jerry Sutton of Nashville, on a campaign based on strengthening local church support for the denomination's missionary work and seminaries, and for opening the ranks of leadership.

It was the Southern Baptists' first contested presidential election in more than a decade and one of the few since conservatives took control.

Much of his support likely grew out of blogging networks of mostly young pastors and church members who liked his outlook, Page said.

"I think they were saying we want a broader base of democracy. We want to be able to make a choice," he said. "We want to be able to discuss issues that are of importance."

Power within the denomination had been concentrated in the hands of a few who had led the fight against moderates, Page said.

"After a while, they took ownership," he said, "and a smaller group of pastors and people began to see the convention as one that they could run, they could control."

Page doesn't disagree with most of what the established leadership has done. But he believes a wider range of possibilities might come to life by "broadening the base" of leadership.

"I have to be very careful because a lot of people think I mean I'm trying to upstage the conservative resurgence. I'm not trying to do that at all," he said.

"I'm just a regular pastor of a somewhat regular church, and I believe that hit a chord with people." Hot buttonsAn example of the change of tone Page has in mind: He believes posting of the Ten Commandments in government buildings isn't a violation of the First Amendment and that "they ought to be on the walls of the courthouse."

But that's not an issue he plans to push.

"Posting things on a wall is not going change a lot of people's lives, is it? It's how we live those Ten Commandments in our daily lives that's going to make the difference," he said.

He fought against a resolution during the convention that would have encouraged Southern Baptists to pull their kids out of "government schools" and either homeschool them or send them to Christian schools.

He took that position in part because he knows some families can't afford those options, but also because he wants to encourage "evangelical believers" to run for school board and "engage in every level" of the public school system.

The latter, he said, is with hopes of turning around an "anti-Christian stance" that he believes many schools are taking.

Part of that is related to the teaching of evolution, he said.

"I reject evolution as a theory that has any scientific basis whatsoever," he said. "I would wish that our schools would at least present a balanced view of (intelligent design) versus evolution and let the students hear both sides."

Intelligent design theory holds that the complexity of life couldn't have developed through random mutation and natural selection alone. HomecomingThose issues weren't much in view this week in Greensboro, N.C., where Page was elected during the denomination's annual convention, though.

It was something of a homecoming for him, as he went from being an unknown pastor to a national figure at a coliseum just across the street from the church where he was ordained and less than a block from where he grew up.

His church, Taylors First Baptist, is a good example of how he would like to shape the denomination. It sends 12 percent of its offerings to the convention's international and domestic missionary work and seminaries, bucking a downward trend across the denomination.

His church's membership had plateaued in 1993 and began to decline in 1997, but worship attendance has more than doubled since he came here in 2001 to an average of more than 2,500.

Between 75 and 80 percent of Southern Baptist churches are losing members, according to denomination figures.

For now, though, it's vacation time for the new president. He and his family are on their way to Yellowstone National Park today, on a trip his church gave them as a gift for his five-year anniversary as pastor. It was scheduled before he had any idea he would be elected to lead a mega-denomination.

"All of a sudden it's changed a little bit," he said of his life. "I'm in the center whether I want to be or not."