Baptist Briefs_110104

Posted: 10/29/04

Baptist Briefs

New York Baptists choose executive director. The executive board of the Baptist Convention of New York elected long-time pastor Terry Robertson as the fifth executive director of the 35-year-old convention. He will succeed J.B. Graham on Graham's retirement Nov. 5. The convention includes 394 churches in New York, northern New Jersey and southwestern Connecticut, representing 25,000 church members. The 50-year-old Robertson, pastor of Madison (N.J.) Baptist Church, has been a pastor, church planter and associational missionary in New York. He has served as the New York representative on the Southern Baptist Convention Executive Committee since 1995 and was on the Southern Baptist Convention Committee on Nominations in 2002. He served on the executive board of the Baptist Convention of New York from 1995 to 1998. A native of Alabama, Robertson is a graduate of Samford University in Birmingham, Ala., and New Orleans Baptist Theological Seminary. Robertson and his wife, Elizabeth, have three sons.

Baldridge to leave shared CBF post. Gary Baldridge, who with his wife, Barbara, has led the Cooperative Baptist Fellowship's global missions effort for five years, will leave CBF at the end of the year to return to a career in writing. CBF Coordinator Daniel Vestal told the group's Coordinating Council Barbara Baldridge will become interim coordinator Jan. 1, assuming the duties she now shares with her husband. He expressed hope she would be elected sole missions coordinator. Gary Baldridge, 53, a newspaper reporter before becoming a missionary more than 25 years ago, plans to do freelance magazine journalism and will try to publish a novel and screenplay he has written. The Baldridges served as Southern Baptist missionaries 17 years in Zambia and several other countries, resigning in 1994 to go to work for the Fellowship.

Couple's gift establishes lecture. Walter and Kay Shurden of Macon, Ga., gave $100,000 to the Baptist Joint Committee to establish an annual lectureship on religious liberty and church-state separation. Designed to enhance the ministry and programs of the Baptist Joint Committee, the Shurden Lectures will be held at Mercer University every three years and at another seminary, college or university the other years. The first lecture is planned for either 2006 or 2007 at Mercer.

Plains pastor plans retirement. After 22 years as pastor of a small Baptist congregation that includes former President Jimmy Carter and his wife, Rosalynn, Dan Ariail plans to retire next year. Ariail, 66, will retire Oct. 1, 2005, or earlier in the year if Maranatha Baptist Church in Plains, Ga., calls a new pastor. The 135-member church is known for attracting thousands of visitors each year to hear Carter teach weekly Sunday school lessons. Ariail preaches weekly to more visitors than members, with many guests experiencing a Baptist church for the first time. He and his wife, Nell, plan to continue living in Plains and being a part of the Maranatha congregation.

Baptist ethics pioneer dies. Henlee Barnette, a former professor and author who pioneered the study of Christian ethics at Southern Baptist Theological Seminary, died Oct. 20 at age 93. Barnette, who taught at Southern from 1951 to 1977, and T.B. Maston, who taught at Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary in Fort Worth, were considered co-pioneers as Southern Baptist ethicists, according to Bill Leonard, dean of Wake Forest University's divinity school. "Both addressed the racial issue very early and then helped Baptists think through the moral crusades of the last half of the 20th century," said Leonard, a friend and former colleague of Barnette's. Barnette once invited Martin Luther King Jr. to preach a chapel service at Southern when King was in Louisville to take part in a fair-housing campaign. King was not popular among many Southern Baptists or other white Southerners at the time, and as a result, more than 200 Alabama Baptist churches stopped sending money to Southern.