The Executive Board of the South Carolina Baptist Convention held its organizational meeting for 2008 in Columbia on Dec. 11, re-electing a Conway pastor as its chairman.
Jim Austin, executive director-treasurer of the South Carolina Baptist Convention, left, congratulates Executive Board officers for 2008. From left are Tom Swilley, D.J. Horton and Dennis Sartain.Tom Swilley, pastor of Cedar Grove Baptist Church in the Waccamaw Association, was elected without opposition for a second term as chairman. Members of the Executive Board, meeting at the Baptist Building, also re-elected without opposition its vice chairman, D.J. Horton, pastor of Anderson Mill Road Baptist Church in Moore, Spartanburg County Network.
The new secretary for the Executive Board is Dennis Sartain, pastor of Mizpah Baptist Church in Florence. He succeeds Reinhold Koschel, pastor of First Baptist Church in Abbeville, Lakelands Baptist Association.
Jim Austin, executive director-treasurer of the South Carolina Baptist Convention, using Acts 2 to describe the characteristics of first-century Christians and the early church, challenged members of the Executive Board and their churches to be “God-worshipping, gospel-sharing, purposeful-giving and missionary-sending” in response to the need to spread the gospel in South Carolina and around the world.
He noted that the International Mission Board has identified more than 200 people groups who have had no access to the gospel.