The news out of Columbia was reassuring. Carlisle Driggers, who officially retires on Feb. 28, will remain in the position of executive director-treasurer of the South Carolina Baptist Convention until his successor is selected.
Don KirklandDriggers had announced his retirement plans last April. He said that “the time has come for me to announce my retirement” after 15 years at the helm of the nation’s oldest Baptist convention. He called it “the best of times for me to step aside.” He pronounced the convention’s condition as “positive and healthy.” He called attention to a “kingdom growth focus” throughout most of South Carolina. He cited as praiseworthy the “strong finances” that undergird the work of South Carolina Baptists along with staff members at the Baptist building who “love to serve.” He applauded “a committed Executive Board, worthy institutions, lots of growing churches, missions-driven associations, and strong relationships in place with the various entities of the Southern Baptist Convention.”
In short, he had chosen the ideal time to retire with the second longest tenure of any executive director in South Carolina. His place in the life of the convention was fixed. Driggers was, and is, a visionary. According to Don Davis, retired pastor of Trinity Baptist Church in Cayce, who chaired the search committee for a successor to Ray Rust, it was the “great vision” Driggers had for South Carolina Baptists that so impressed the committee.
That vision took the form of Empowering Kingdom Growth, a strategy for enhancing church growth that the new executive vowed would be “my focus.” The convention put its signature on a decade-long EKG emphasis that proved to be the centerpiece of the Driggers administration. EKG was renewed for an extended five-year run in 2002. It gained national prominence when the Southern Baptist Convention adopted it as its strategy, too. From 2002-2005, Driggers chaired the SBC Empowering Kingdom Growth task force.
Driggers left no doubt as to what EKG was at its heart. “Kingdom growth,” he explained in 1991, “goes far beyond numbers. Kingdom growth also is measured by such indicators as spiritual enrichment through Bible study, prayer and worship, missions involvement, and stewardship development.”
The accent – and he made this clear – would be placed on the work of the local church. “If the church is weak,” he said then, “how can we carry out the Great Commission of Christ? If we are going to be effective, we must put the focus on the local church.”
The task of finding a successor to Driggers fell to a seven-member committee from the Executive Board, appointed by board chairman Mike Hamlet, pastor of First Baptist Church, North Spartanburg, and chaired by Tim Williams, pastor of Roebuck Baptist Church in the Spartanburg County Baptist Network.
No one knew at the time how difficult and time-consuming it would be to sift through a list of potential picks and settle on a single name. The committee is seeking to be unanimous in its recommendation.
Ideally, the committee, which had been formed in May, would bring its candidate to the meeting of the Executive Board in October. Upon approval by that body, the name would be moved along to the state convention in November for a vote by registered messengers. That would have given the designated executive director more than three months of preparation before taking office.
When the deadline passed for that chain of events to happen, there was expectancy among many South Carolina Baptists that a candidate would emerge in time for election at a special session of the state convention held in conjunction with the annual evangelism conference. That did not happen, either.
And now, it is left to South Carolina Baptists to wait and wonder who its next executive director will be. Waiting, though, is not a heavy burden. Carlisle Driggers is to be commended for his willingness to postpone, at least for a while, the pleasures of full retirement. And that gracious decision on his part has spared the convention the necessity of looking beyond Driggers for leadership until a new executive director is elected.
His is a steadying influence on the convention in times which he has characterized as “uncertain, complicated and even perilous.” It was in light of this that Driggers, at the time he announced his retirement, challenged South Carolina Baptists to pray and “search the mind of Christ” in naming his successor.
The search committee has requested the prayers of all South Carolina Baptists as it continues its work. The committee requires and deserves our prayers.
And one thing more. Last April, Driggers said that if South Carolina Baptists are to fulfill their sacred mission as a denomination, they have “no alternative but to stay together, focused on the Lord’s kingdom work to be accomplished rather than being distracted by our own small kingdoms to pursue.”
These are words of wisdom and challenge for every South Carolina Baptist and especially for each member of the search committee in whom so much is entrusted.