Baptist Briefs

Posted: 7/06/07

Baptist Briefs

Southwestern Seminary trustee resigns. Dwight McKissic, who frequently has been at odds with fellow trustees at Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary, resigned from the school’s board. McKissic, pastor of the predominantly African-American Cornerstone Baptist Church in Arlington, was the lone dissenter when trustees voted last October to forbid the seminary from employing professors who advocate speaking in tongues. Earlier, in a chapel sermon at Southwestern, McKissic said that since his days as a student at the seminary, he has used a “private prayer language,” considered by many a variation of tongues-speaking. In March, trustees tried to expel him permanently from the board, a move McKissic called “nothing but a 21st-century lynching.” Trustees later decided not to remove him. The debate over tongues “has taken a tremendous toll on my family and ministry, and my wife believes it has negatively impacted my health,” McKissic said in a letter to Van McClain, chairman of the seminary trustee board. He also said he has been “distracted and consumed” by the controversy and needs to refocus on his family and church.

Baptist college association elects leader. The International Association of Baptist Colleges and Universities board elected Thomas Corts, president emeritus of Samford University, as the association’s executive director. Corts, 65, succeeds Bob Agee, who announced last December he would retire at the June meeting. Corts served as interim chancellor of the Alabama College System last year. Prior to that position, he was president of Samford University from 1983 to 2006. He served previously at Wingate University in North Carolina, the Higher Education Consortium of Kentucky and Georgetown College in Kentucky. Corts is married to the former Marla Ruth Haas. They have three children and six grandchildren.

CBF church-starting specialist to retire. Phil Hester, a Cooperative Baptist Fellowship specialist for new churches, has announced he plans to retire at the end of this year. During his seven-year tenure at CBF, Hester helped start churches in 21 states, including a cowboy church in Texas and an emergent church in Florida. Hester also created and facilitated the annual CBF Boot Camp for Church Starts, held each August. Before coming to CBF, Hester worked as an advertising agency president, professor, consultant and church starter. He lives in St. Petersburg, Fla.

Missionary receives Whitsitt Society award. Lauren Bethell, an American Baptist missionary who has spent most of her adult life ministering to and rescuing women from prostitution and sexual trafficking, received the William H. Whitsitt Baptist Heritage Society’s annual Courage Award. The group met during the Cooperative Baptist Fellowship general assembly in Washington, June 28.

African-American convention tackles AIDS. For the first time, the nation’s largest African-American religious body corporately addressed the HIV/AIDS crisis. AIDS awareness and prevention figured prominently on the agenda for the annual meeting of the National Baptist Convention USA, Inc. in St. Louis. Leaders of the 7.5 million-member group said 45,000 National Baptists participated in the gathering. Organizers also planned to hold a forum to address 3,000 black youths on the topic of HIV prevention. Nationwide, African-Americans constitute nearly half of new HIV/AIDS diagnosis. HIV infection is the United States’ leading cause of death for black women aged 25-34, according to the Centers for Disease Control.