Don WiltonI trust this note finds you and your family well, happy and rejoicing in the Lord. I continue to be so blessed to serve as your president this year. I want you to know just now much I love you and pray for you, as well as our ministers and pastors, our wonderful congregations and the work to which the Lord has called us here in South Carolina.
By now, you have become partnered with all of us in the news of Dr. Carlisle Driggers’ announcement regarding his retirement, which is to become effective in February of next year.
Together with the Executive Board, I was privileged to be at White Oak Conference Center – not only to hear his announcement, but also to listen to his heart. What a choice servant of the Lord Dr. Driggers is and how blessed we have been as South Carolina Baptists to have been led and inspired by both him and his lovely wife Jeanette.
During our worship time together, Dr. Driggers allowed us to travel with him as both he and Jeanette ran headlong into the gracious call and guiding hand of our Savior. Their journey from the farmlands of South Carolina to the hallowed halls of seminary, from a radio microphone to racial reconciliation in Kentucky and Atlanta, from pastoring in churches to leading the greatest state in America, was filled with one surprise after another.
God has been pleased to put Dr. Driggers in the right place at the right time, and we have all been blessed as a result. The long sustained applause of the Executive Board will linger a long time in this pastor’s heart.
So what’s next? The procedures are in place, our convention has never been in better shape, and we can fully expect the Lord to do it again.
We must pray for Tim Williams and his committee as they do their work. Pray for the Executive Board, as they meet in October to do their work. Pray for our annual meeting in November, as our people do their work.
And what is our work? To pray, to give input, and to agree with our Savior in His selection of our next leader and to have grateful hearts for all our Lord has done, and will continue to do, as we serve Him.