Frank Cox, pastor of North Metro First Baptist Church in Lawrenceville, Ga., will be nominated for president of the Southern Baptist Convention during the SBC’s June 10-11 annual meeting in Indianapolis, Alabama evangelist Junior Hill announced Feb. 7.
Frank CoxCox is the third nominee to be announced, although one candidate, Albert Mohler Jr., president of Southern Baptist Seminary, has withdrawn from consideration for health reasons. (See related article on this page.) William “Bill” Wagner, a former Southern Baptist missionary and seminary professor and president of Olivet University International in San Francisco, is the other announced nominee.
Cox is a former president of the Georgia Baptist Convention and former SBC first vice president. He also served on the SBC Executive Committee for nine years and is a member of the SBC funding study committee. He was a member of the ad hoc Cooperative Program committee, which formed in 2003 and issued its final report in 2006 with recommendations about how to revitalize the SBC’s primary giving channel.
Cox’s Atlanta-area church “models missions, evangelism and faithful stewardship as well as any church I know,” said Hill, of Hartselle, Ala. “He has a rapport with younger pastors and will help get them involved in the great work of our denomination. As our convention president, he will speak with a clear voice to call our nation back to God.”
Cox has been North Metro’s pastor for more than 27 years. Under his leadership, the church has grown from 700 members to more than 4,600, with 3,600-plus individuals added to the church fellowship as baptized believers. A total of 164 persons have surrendered to full-time Christian service under Cox’s pastorate at North Metro. Cox led his congregation to change the church’s name from Pleasant Hill to North Metro First Baptist and relocate from a six-acre site to a 55-acre site 10 miles north of the original location.
Beginning in 2002, North Metro has been in the top 100 of all SBC churches in total dollars contributed through the Cooperative Program, ranking 44 of 44,223 congregations in 2006.
The most recent information available, Southern Baptists’ 2006 Annual Church Profile Survey, lists 110 baptisms and primary worship service attendance of 1,737 for North Metro. The congregation gave $393,839, or 13.4 percent, through the Cooperative Program from total undesignated receipts of $2,946,717. According to the ACP, the church’s total mission expenditures were $601,416, with $59,976 given for the Lottie Moon Christmas Offering for International Missions and $23,494 for the Annie Armstrong Easter Offering for North American Missions. – BP