Boggs selected for Louisiana paper

Posted: 12/16/05

Boggs selected for Louisiana paper

By Greg Warner

Associated Baptist Press

ALEXANDRIA, La. (ABP)–Trustees of the Baptist Message of Louisiana, who last month were rebuffed in an effort to dissolve their independent board, unanimously elected conservative Oregon pastor Kelly Boggs as editor.

Boggs, 45, pastor of Valley Baptist Church in McMinnville, Ore., for the past six-and-a-half years, is also a newspaper columnist in Oregon and frequent commentator for Baptist Press, the Southern Baptist Convention's information service. He replaces Lynn Clayton, who is retiring.

Under a plan proposed by David Hankins, new executive director of the Louisiana Baptist Convention, the 119-year-old newspaper would have been merged into the convention structure as part of a newly formed communications team. The paper's trustees initially rejected the idea but then approved it a few months later as part of a package deal that would have made new Communi-cations Director John Yeats editor of the newspaper as well.

The plan to dissolve the board, which required a two-thirds vote by messengers at the Nov. 14-15 convention meeting, was defeated by an estimated two-to-one margin. Messengers who spoke against the move complained the newspaper would lose its journalistic freedom. The board has been independent of the convention since the 1960s.

The newspapers' trustees, who reportedly deadlocked earlier between Boggs and another candidate, then offered the job to Boggs.

Boggs is a Texas native married to the former Mindy Lee Slack. They have four children: Torrey Wynn, 15; Karis Leslie, 13; Hannah Lee, 11; and Parker Micah, 9.

In presenting Boggs to board members, Baptist Message Chair Larry Thompson cited his experience presenting a Christian worldview through newspaper columns in one of the nation's less-evangelized areas.

Boggs holds a master of divinity degree from Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary in Fort Worth. Prior to that, he earned an undergraduate degree from the University of Mary Hardin-Baylor in Belton.