JERSEY CITY, N.J.(BP)–Trustees of the North American Mission Board met May 2, their first meeting since the resignation of NAMB President Bob Reccord. The board approved 74 new missionaries and 63 SBC-endorsed chaplains, elected new officers and approved a resolution expressing appreciation for Reccord’s term of service.
By Martin King
For Baptist Press
JERSEY CITY, N.J.(BP)–Trustees of the North
American Mission Board met May 2, their first meeting since the
resignation of NAMB President Bob Reccord. The board approved 74 new
missionaries and 63 SBC-endorsed chaplains, elected new officers and
approved a resolution expressing appreciation for Reccord’s term of
service.
The mission board’s trustees also heard encouraging
reports on NAMB’s ministries across the United States and Canada, and
they were affirmed and challenged by SBC President Bobby Welch
concerning their search for Reccord’s successor.
“Your choice for the next leader of this ministry
may be the greatest ministry contribution of your life,” Welch told the
trustees, about 40 in number at the meeting.
“Don’t mess up. On behalf of 16 million Southern
Baptists in 45,000 churches, don’t mess up. You’ve got to get this
right because the eternal destiny of untold millions depends on your
choice. That’s how important your search is.”
Welch, pastor of First Baptist Church in Daytona
Beach, Fla., said NAMB, as the SBC’s domestic mission arm, “sends the
signal to the rest of the convention. This organization sets the
cadence, the pace, the tone for evangelism throughout North America.
NAMB is overwhelmingly important, so there is little wonder the enemy
is after us.”
Reccord resigned April 17. A nine-member
presidential search committee chaired by Terry G. Fox, pastor of
Immanuel Baptist Church in Wichita, Kan., was announced the following
week. Fox on May 2 said the process will be prayerful and deliberate.
“We plan to be very cautious and slow the process
down so we will not be in a rush,” he said, noting that the committee
intends to conduct a variety of listening sessions with a broad
spectrum of leadership, including state convention partners, pastors of
large and small churches and directors of missions.
Welch told the trustees they needed to come to a
“clear, confident choice. Someone bold, trusted, a soul-winner – he
must be a soul-winner. The best thing is that when the name comes out,
you’ll hear an affirming ‘yes’ across our convention.”