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Southern Baptist College, Seminary Professors Reiterate Church’s Role in Baptism
EC President Search Team Names Chair, Plans Season of Prayer
BY SCOTT BARKLEY
The six-member search team tasked with selecting the next president and CEO of the SBC Executive Committee is calling on all Southern Baptists to be part of the process.
“We want to get the message out that everyone in this convention matters,” said Mike Keahbone, pastor of First Baptist Church in Lawton, Oklahoma. “Everyone has a role to play and if you aren’t involved, your [SBC] family suffers.”
The team held its first meeting March 3 via Zoom, with Keahbone sharing the news of the call to prayer on Twitter March 4. “All of us need to be in fervent prayer for our next leader. #doyourpart,” he wrote.
California pastor and EC chairman Rolland Slade, also a member of the search team in an ex officio role, reported that Adron Robinson, senior pastor of Hillcrest Baptist Church in Country Club Hills, Illinois, will serve as chair; David Sons, lead pastor of Lake Murray Baptist Church in Lexington, South Carolina, will be vice-chair; and Philip Robertson, senior pastor of Philadelphia Baptist Church in Deville, Louisiana, will serve as secretary.
“I’m honored my peers selected me for this role and I’ll do my best throughout the process,” said Robinson. “The Lord knows who our next EC president will be and it is our job to seek His will in this process. We’re asking Southern Baptists to join us over the next month for this season of prayer so we can hear from God collectively and be of one accord.”
In looking through documentation of previous searches for a president/CEO, the team noticed there hadn’t been a recorded call to prayer for Southern Baptists on the matter. The current season in the convention cries out for it, Keahbone commented.
“With everything going on—racial reconciliation, the abuse investigation, and a report about to come out on it—there are a lot of eyes on the SBC,” he said. “This hire could be one of the most significant we’ve ever made.”
A prayer strategy will be shared by the group soon, Keahbone added. Other members of the team are Mollie Duddleston, director of ministry operations at Cross Church in Springdale, Arkansas, and Jeremy Morton, senior pastor of First Baptist Church in Woodstock, Georgia.
“We need to rally everyone connected to Southern Baptists to take a season and enter a time of fervent prayer for who God is going to put in that position, for us to have wisdom and discernment,” Keahbone said. “We want this to be God’s man, and everyone is excited about that.”
A version of this article was published in Baptist Press on March 4, 2022.
SCOTT BARKLEY is national correspondent for Baptist Press.
California Southern Baptists Begin Search for New Executive Director
Victor Chayasirisobhon, president California Southern Baptist Convention
BY DIANA CHANDLER
The California Southern Baptist Convention (CSBC) has launched a search for a new executive director to replace Bill Agee, who is retiring.
The new leader tasked with overseeing CSBC’s strategic vision and leading its decision making should be a man called and sent by God and able to navigate California’s unique diversity, said CSBC President Victor Chayasirisobhon, who is also a member of the search committee.
“California is a large and diverse state that has unique challenges that only someone with experience here can truly know and therefore I think it is important that this person know California
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Victor Chayasirisobhon
intimately,” Chayasirisobhon told Baptist Press. “Due to the diversity of the state, I think it is important for our future director to be culturally intelligent and pay attention to the little nuances of cross-cultural interaction.
“They should be able to see through the lenses of many different perspectives,” said Chayasirisobhon, who pastors First Southern Baptist Church of Anaheim and is director of missions of the Orange County Southern Baptist Association. “The person should be someone who understands that the SBC is a family and that we are to work together in unity. We may not always agree on everything but there is a difference in building understanding as a family than there is when you are not.”
The new leader must have served as a pastor in the western US, have experience in organizational leadership, possess at least a master’s degree but preferably a doctorate, and must be a strong communicator with cultural intelligence among other attributes, according to the job description.
The CSBC’s goals, Chayasirisobhon says, include planting churches to reach all of California, equipping churches fulfill their mission, ministering to children and youth, building unity with cultural understanding among churches, working with SBC partners in accomplishing the Great Commandment and Great Commission, conducting disaster relief, and welcoming attendees to the 2022 SBC Annual Meeting in Anaheim.
The CSBC Executive Board accepted Agee’s retirement in January, allowing him to leave through a transitional process ending December 31 and expanding the role of Associate Executive Director Pete Ramirez during the transition.
Joining Chayasirisobhon on the search committee are chairman Shawn Beaty, pastor of Clovis Hills Community Church in Clovis and an CSBC Executive Board member; Bushawn Carpenter, pastor of Total Restoration Church in Barstow; Narri Cooper, a member of Seasons Church in Spring Valley; Becky Duron, a member of The Vine Church in Rancho Cucamonga; Kendrick Neal, lead pastor of Calvary Church in West Hills; Charles Woods, pastor of Feather River Baptist Church in Olivehurst; and ex officio member Daniel Cassels, pastor of Life Way Fellowship of Santa Maria and CSBC Executive Board chairman.
The CSBC, a fellowship of 2,300 churches comprising about 450,000 members of diverse ethnicities and languages, is one of 42 Southern Baptist state conventions cooperating with the Southern Baptist Convention. About 80 languages are spoken among CSBC congregations.
A version of this article was published in Baptist Press on March 10, 2022.
DIANA CHANDLER is Baptist Press’s senior writer.
COMMUNISM IS NOT DEAD
Although Communism collapsed in Eastern Europe and the Soviet Union about three decades ago, its global influence continues to threaten and oppress God’s people today.
Communism was upheld as an answer to corruption and greed that would eliminate conflict between the classes, or “the exploitation of one part of society by the other.” In theory, it would create a utopian paradise on earth. In practice, however, it was what Richard Wurmbrand, founder of The Voice of the Martyrs (VOM) who spent 14 years in Communist prisons for his faith, called the “principal enemy.”
When Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels published The Communist Manifesto in 1848 with the aim of “liberating” the working class, they wrote, “The history of all hitherto existing societies is the history of class struggles.” They believed these class struggles could be resolved by abolishing the ownership of private property and allowing the government to manage it for public use.
In the process of obliterating class barriers, the Communists also suppressed what they viewed as a major threat to their ideology — religion and the church. Marx famously called religion “the opium of the people,” a tool used by capitalists to suppress and deceive the working class. And in The Communist Manifesto, Marx and Engels brashly asserted that “Communism abolishes eternal truths, it abolishes all religion, and all morality.” They were not alone in that belief.
Vladimir Lenin, who in 1917 led the Bolshevik Revolution that transformed Russia into a bastion of Communism, stated his intent toward the church: “We demand complete disestablishment of the Church so as to be able to combat the religious fog with purely ideological and solely ideological weapons.” The Communist Party had become atheistic in word and deed.
This is the atheistic Communism that Richard Wurmbrand experienced when the Soviet Union occupied his Romanian homeland in 1944. After being ransomed out of Communist Romania, he boldly spoke out about Communism’s effects on Christians and Christianity:
I cannot agree … that the principal foe today is the materialism of the West. Today the principal enemy is Communism. Capitalism might have its evils, but it gives to the church the liberty to work at the salvation of souls. Communism ... uproots religion. The missionary energies must be concentrated upon the Communist lands.
Although he wrote these words in 1969, they are still relevant today. Communism has a global influence that continues to threaten and oppress God’s people.
All About Control
After the fall of Communism in Eastern Europe and the Soviet Union, many of the remaining Communist countries became economically unstable without the financial support of the Soviet Union. These countries therefore shifted tactics, focusing more on global economic expansion and control than on territorial and political expansion.
In the late 1970s, years prior to the collapse of Soviet Communism, Deng Xiaoping had adjusted China’s economic policies and begun to engage in the world economy. China continued to implement capitalist principles over the next two decades to bolster its wealth and global image.
Some Western leaders thought China’s international business dealings would force its government to relax restrictions on human rights, including the treatment of Christians, particularly house church Christians. But doing business with the world has not forced Communist power brokers to relinquish control over the country’s citizens. As China’s wealth has grown, so has the government’s ability to track, monitor and control the Chinese people. Recent crackdowns on the church in China have resulted in more arrests and harassment, and Chinese believers are once again being forced “underground.”
Similarly, in the relatively tiny and economically weak nation of Cuba, little has changed for Christians in 60 years under Communism. In the words of one Cuban pastor, “The world has to understand that Cuba is still a Communist country.”
In 1959, Fidel Castro’s Communists overthrew the regime of Fulgencio Batista in Cuba. For Castro and his followers, Communism was a plausible answer to the corruption and greed that had flourished in Batista’s government. The revolution, however, resulted in no improvements. Cubans must still use ration books to purchase food, there is no private banking system and even doctors earn only the equivalent of about $40 a month. In typical Communist style, the government inventories what each citizen owns; if a person has too much, the government confiscates it.
In addition to these economic hardships, the church in Cuba has faced ongoing persecution and harassment from the Communist government. Cuban pastors have told VOM that they know the government plants spies in their church services, hoping to catch the pastors saying something that can be used against them. Pastors are also routinely detained and questioned for hours or days at a time before being fined and released.
In addition, many Christian students are refused diplomas unless they bow before a statue of Ernesto “Che” Guevara, the Argentinian Marxist revolutionary who helped Castro overthrow the Batista government.
No legal Christian bookstores exist in Cuba, and no new church buildings have been constructed since the Communist takeover in 1959. Existing churches face constant harassment, with the government cutting electricity and water to some church buildings, and demolishing others.
Global Influence
While China, Vietnam, Laos and Cuba are considered some of the last “Communist” nations, the ideology remains influential in several other nations, including India and Nepal. In India, Communist groups are called Naxalites, a name originating from the town of Naxalbari in northeastern India where an uprising occurred in the late 1960s. The Naxalites claim to represent the poorest in Indian society, especially those from a low caste or no caste in the Hindu-dominated country.
Although the Naxalites don’t commonly persecute Christians, VOM field leaders say Hindu extremists often pay or incite Naxalites to persecute Christians. Naxalites were responsible for the 2019 murders of two Christians in separate incidents.
In Nepal, Communist Maoist guerrillas were instrumental in the Nepalese Civil War that led to the 2008 overthrow of the country’s monarchy, which had ruled the Himalayan nation for more than two centuries. Today, the Communist Party holds seats in parliament, and Maoist groups have been known to persecute Christians.
In restricted nations like Eritrea and North Korea, dictatorial leaders educated in Communist doctrine apply the ideology’s values without a Communist political party.
Eritrea’s president, Isaias Afwerki, studied in China during the Cultural Revolution (1966–1976), absorbing Chairman Mao Zedong’s strong-arm approach to governance. Upon his return to Eritrea, Afwerki founded his own Marxist revolutionary movement — the Eritrean People’s Liberation Front, later renamed The People’s Front for Democracy and Justice. Afwerki and his followers joined in a 30-year battle for independence from Ethiopia that resulted in defeat for Ethiopia, independence for Eritrea and a presidency for Afwerki in 1993.
While many Eritreans had looked with hope toward their new nation’s government, Afwerki’s totalitarian tendencies became more apparent with each
E Ernesto “Che” Guevara with Fidel Castro, who overthrew Fulgencio Batista to establish Communism in Cuba. Today, students in Cuba are required to bow before a statue of Che Guevara before they can obtain their diploma.
Communism Today
World Population: 7.7 billion
Approximately 3 billion people live in countries where Christians face Communist oppression.
NEPALNEPAL CHINACHINA NORTH KOREA NORTH KOREA
ERITREA ERITREA
E North Korean dictator Kim Il Sung received training from the Communists in the Soviet Union.
passing year. In keeping with his Marxist governmental policies, he also embraced atheism. Christians in Eritrea are harshly persecuted to this day, some enduring years of imprisonment in extreme conditions.
Like Eritrea’s leader, North Korea’s Kim Il Sung underwent military and political training in the Soviet Union in the 1930s after joining a Communist youth organization. With the help of the Soviets, specifically Joseph Stalin, Kim Il Sung formed what we know as North Korea, one of the most repressive nations in the world today.
North Korea is unique among Communist-influenced governments. While most Communist countries embrace and promote atheism, North Korea upholds Communist principles in a totalitarian-style government that requires citizens to worship Kim Il Sung, who is venerated as a god. The state religion, Juche, was created as a distortion of Christianity. For example, instead of the Ten Commandments, North Koreans are to follow the “Ten Principles,” among which is this revealing statement: “We must make absolute the authority of the Great Leader comrade Kim Il Sung.”
INDIAINDIA LAOSLAOS
VIETNAM VIETNAM
COLOMBIA COLOMBIA
(FARC)(FARC)
The Last Victory
Communism is not dead. As economically empowered Communist nations strengthen and expand their global influence, their governments continue to actively persecute our Christian brothers and sisters in Christ. And contrary to the ideals of Marx and Engels, Communist and Communistinfluenced countries around the world are rife with corruption, greed and gross social injustice.
Despite the efforts of Communist nations in Eastern Europe to suppress and eradicate the church by imprisoning and torturing pastors, destroying church buildings and banning Bibles, the church simply went underground and remained faithful to Christ. Some Christians, like Richard Wurmbrand, emerged stronger, calling out the evils of the atheistic Communist system while emphasizing the urgency to win Communists for Christ. And Christians in Communist and Communist-influenced countries live and act in that same spirit today.
During a television interview in Australia in 1970, Richard Wurmbrand was asked if Communism was a threat to the church in the country. “Not the church of Christ,” he replied. “Even the gates of hell cannot prevail against her. It is Communism which is rather endangered by the existence of the church, because the last victory is ours. … We don’t tremble before Communism. They should be in panic because of us.”
The faithful witness of our brothers and sisters in Christ causes panic and fear within Communist governments. These courageous believers know their promise of an eternal kingdom far outweighs any suffering they may endure under the godless agenda of a temporal kingdom. While their witness inspires us to stand with them and reach out to our neighbors with the gospel, may our knowledge of Communism’s atheistic roots and agenda keep us vigilant in prayer and action.
Sabina: Tortured for Christ, the Nazi Years is the story of how God’s love transformed an ambitious, atheistic hedonist into one of the greatest Christian women of the 20th century. Experience the amazing true story that has redefined the concepts of love and forgiveness for millions around the world.
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Missie Branch Image Courtesy of Lifeway Christian Resources
Lifeway Trustees Elect First African American Woman Trustee Chair
BY CAROL PIPES
For the first time in its 130-year history, Lifeway Christian Resources has an African American woman as trustee chair. Missie Branch was elected Tuesday, March 8, by Lifeway trustees during a special-called meeting.
Branch is assistant dean of students to women and director of graduate life at Southeastern Baptist Theological Seminary. A member of Imago Dei Church in Raleigh, North Carolina, Branch began her service on the board in 2017.
Lifeway CEO Ben Mandrell shared his excitement about this historic moment and praised Branch’s leadership ability, character, and love for the local church.
“Missie’s character, commitment to the local church, and investment in tomorrow’s ministry leaders give me confidence that she’s the person to lead our board,” Mandrell said. “I’m excited and thankful for her historic appointment as the first African American female to chair our board.
“Missie is a bright person with a tremendous amount of insight and an inner strength from the Lord. I believe she will be a strong, unifying leader. She is a great friend to Lifeway, and I look forward to our deepened partnership.”
Branch expressed her appreciation for the board and their trust in her to lead them well.
Missie Branch, assistant dean of students to women; director of graduate life Southeastern Baptist Theological Seminary
“I am humbled by the confidence of my fellow board members,” Branch said. “Leading alongside a group like ours is an honor. When asked to join the board a few years ago, I never anticipated an opportunity like this. I love serving an organization whose mission is directly linked to the ministry and mission of the local church. I’m determined to work with my fellow board members as we seek to honor the Lord and serve our Convention.”
Branch was elected vice chair during the trustee meeting held January 25. She fills the role vacated by Greg Kannady, who stepped down as chair due to a recent health issue. While Kannady plans to continue his service as a board member, he shared with trustees via email he felt it would be wise to replace him as board chair.
Mandrell offered his appreciation for Kannady’s continued commitment to Lifeway. “We’re all praying for Greg and his family as they face this health challenge together,” Mandrell said.
Trustees also elected Luther McDaniel, CFO at Empirical Capital Partners, to serve as vice chair. McDaniel has served on the board since 2016. He’s a member of First Baptist Church, Hendersonville, Tennessee.
“Luther McDaniel’s financial and business expertise is invaluable as he steps into the vice chair role,” Mandrell said. “I’m grateful for his leadership and for the other men and women who faithfully serve on our board.”
Ben Posey, pastor of First Baptist Church in Leroy, Alabama, continues to serve as recording secretary.
“I so appreciate Ben’s servant leadership and devotion to serving Christ and His church,” Mandrell said. “The church he pastors is similar to a large majority of Southern Baptist churches—churches that rely on the resources Lifeway provides. It’s indispensable to have pastors like Ben providing feedback and speaking into those resources.”
The next Lifeway trustee meeting is scheduled for August 29–30, 2022.
A version of this article was published in Baptist Press on March 8, 2022.
CAROL PIPES is director of corporate communications for Lifeway Christian Resources.
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