3,142 churches represented at SBC
Kentucky Baptists sent the largest number of messengers, 729, of the 7,277 who registered for the June 10-11 meeting at the Indiana Convention Center. Kentucky messengers comprised 10.02 percent of the registration. The next four leading states in messenger count were Tennessee with 629 messengers (8.64 percent of the total); Georgia, 604 (8.30 percent); North Carolina, 518 (7.12 percent); and Indiana, 439 (6.03 percent). South Carolina was represented by 358 messengers. Messengers were sent by 3,142 churches from 49 states, the District of Columbia and Puerto Rico. By gender, 61.28 percent of the messengers were male, 38.48 percent female.
Former Southern professor Dever dies
John Dever, a former professor of church and society at Southern Baptist Seminary, died of a heart attack July 4 at the age of 72. Dever joined the faculty in 1989 and served as the William Walker Brookes Professor of Church and Society from 1992-2001, when he assumed a part-time role in the seminary’s Billy Graham School of Missions, Evangelism and Church Growth. He retired in 2007. “John Dever was a devoted teacher and a respected faculty colleague,” seminary president Albert Mohler said. “His years at Southern Seminary were strategic, and he invested himself in the lives of so many students through Southern Seminary and the Billy Graham School. He devoted his life to the classroom and was especially involved with doctoral students. Those students came to appreciate John Dever’s scholarship and personal concern.” Dever also served as a professor at Averett University in Danville, Va. He is survived by his wife of nearly 47 years, Marcia, and their daughter Michelle Deaton, former children’s ministry director at Fairview Baptist Church, Greer, who recently began duties as a school-based counselor with the Greenville Mental Health Department. He was the father-in-law of Todd Deaton, managing editor of The Baptist Courier.
Baptist gifts to Union surpass $3 million
Total giving from Southern Baptist churches and entities has topped $3 million for Union University’s recovery from a Feb. 5 tornado that destroyed much of the housing and caused major damage to other academic buildings at the Jackson, Tenn., campus. Tennessee Baptist churches and entities have given $1.8 million of the $3 million total. “We are immensely grateful to our friends both in Tennessee and across the Southern Baptist Convention for their generosity to us in our time of need,” Union University president David Dockery said. More than 800 congregations in Tennessee and across the SBC have provided $2.2 million toward Union’s recovery. All told, more than 6,000 donors have contributed about $13 million to the cause, leaving Union about $5 million short of its needs.
NAMB’s Meacham to work with associations
The North American Mission Board has appointed David Meacham to the newly created position of senior strategist for associations. Prior to his new appointment, Meacham served as NAMB’s senior strategist for church planting. In naming Meacham to the new position, NAMB president Geoff Hammond stated his commitment to ensure greater thinking from Baptist associations throughout the mission board and a higher visibility of associations and their mission efforts. “I believe associations are an important part of Southern Baptist cooperative missions,” said Hammond, himself a former associational director of missions in Arkansas. Hammond said with Meacham in the new post, associations will have a higher profile as NAMB assists Southern Baptists in their task of fulfilling the Great Commission in the United States, Canada and their territories via NAMB’s strategy of sharing Christ, starting churches and sending missionaries in cooperation with its Acts 1:8 partners – state conventions, local associations and churches.