Mississippi Baptists elect first Hispanic officer_112204

Posted: 11/19/04

Mississippi Baptists elect first Hispanic officer, avoid effort
to make 2000 Baptist Faith & Message official doctrinal statement

JACKSON, Miss. (ABP)–For the first time in its 169-year history, the Mississippi Baptist Convention elected a Hispanic as an officer.

Messengers also threw their support behind state and national bans on gay marriage.

Joel Medina, bivocational pastor of Iglesia Internacional Las Americas in Carthage, was elected second vice president without opposition.

Gene Henderson, pastor of First Baptist Church of Brandon, was re-elected to a second term as president. Thad Moore, pastor of Poplar Springs Drive Baptist Church in Meridian, was re-elected to a second term as first vice president.

Messengers approved without dissent a 2005 budget of $31,314,491, which is a 1.5 percent increase over the current year's budget. The portion of the budget going to Southern Baptist Convention causes remains steady at 35 percent.

Messengers avoided an effort to make the 2000 Baptist Faith & Message the convention's doctrinal statement. Responding to a motion introduced during the 2003 annual meeting, the chairman of the constitution and bylaws committee offered an alternative on behalf of the committee, which messengers approved.

The motion by Ken Anderson, pastor of Parkway Baptist Church in Clinton, identified the Baptist Faith & Message as “a guide for understanding and teaching Baptist doctrine.”

In addition to voicing support for a ban on same-sex marriage, messengers also approved a resolution to set aside the first Tuesday of each month to pray and fast for revival in America.

The official messenger registration count for the 2004 meeting was 1,236, a decline of 177 messengers from the 2003 meeting.