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SAN ANTONIO?The Southern Baptist Convention during its annual meeting June 12-13 in San Antonio elected Jim Richards, the Southern Baptists of Texas Convention’s executive director and a member of First Baptist Church of Fort Worth, as its first vice president.
Richards defeated David Rogers, an International Mission Board missionary to Madrid, Spain, by a margin of 2,177 votes (68.7 percent) to 966 votes (30.5 percent).
“Jim Richards, who is executive director of the Southern Baptists of Texas Convention, is one of us,” said Donald M. (Mac) Brunson, pastor of First Baptist Church in Jacksonville, Fla., in his nominating speech. “As leader of the SBTC, he has led that convention in eight years to grow from 120 churches to 1,895. He’s not a bureaucrat; he’s one of us.”
Richards became the executive director of the SBTC after it was constituted as a convention in 1998 with 120 churches.
Since its founding, the SBTC has grown to more than 1,890 churches and has helped plant more than 350 new congregations?a major emphasis of the convention and the largest line item in the SBTC’s budget.
Richards has served as chairman of the SBC Christian Life Commission (now the Ethics & Religious Liberty Commission) and the SBC Committee on Order of Business, and in other roles on the associational, state and national levels. A Louisiana native, Richards earned degrees at New Orleans Baptist Theological Seminary and Mid-America Baptist Theological Seminary.
“I think it’s one of the greatest things that we could ever do [as a convention],” Steve Swofford, pastor of First Baptist Church of Rockwall and SBTC president said of Richards’ election. “I think he is able and capable and will be a great face for the convention. I think he will hold the course steady.”
In addition to Richards and second-term president Frank Page of South Carolina, messengers elected as second vice president Eric Redmond, pastor of Hillcrest Baptist Church in Temple Hills, Md.
Redmond was elected with a vote of 1,765 (61.69 percent) to 1,077 (37.64 percent) over evangelist Bill Britt of Gallatin, Tenn.
“First of all, Eric Redmond is a family man,” said Doyle Chauncey, executive director of the Southern Baptist Conservatives of Virginia state convention, in his nomination speech. “Eric Redmond is a pastor and a scholar. Eric Redmond is an evangelistic pastor, attempting to reach the 20,000 people who live within a mile of his church. Eric Redmond is a church planting pastor. In 2006 Eric Redmond led his church in planting a new church in College Park, Md., in cooperation with the SBCV and the North American Mission Board?a church which continues to thrive.”
Redmond serves as a trustee for Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary and an executive board member of the National African American Fellowship of the SBC. He is an adjunct professor of hermeneutics at Capital Bible Seminary in Lanham, Md. He is also a member of the Evangelical Theological Society.
Messengers also re-elected John L. Yeats, interim pastor of Ridge Avenue Baptist Church in West Monroe, La., as recording secretary and Jim Wells, director of missions for the Tri-County Baptist Association in southwest Missouri, as registration secretary. Both men ran unopposed.
Yeats, who has served in ministry for 36 years, has been the SBC recording secretary since 1996 and is also the director of communications for the Louisiana Baptist Convention. Wells, registration secretary for the SBC since 2002, is a member of Hopedale Baptist Church in Ozark, Mo.
?Compiled from staff reports and Baptist Press
