MBC 1st VP heads slate of candidates
No opposing slate announced thus far
JEFFERSON CITY – Mike Green, first vice president of the Missouri Baptist Convention (MBC) and pastor of Calvary Baptist Church, Republic, will be nominated to serve as president of the MBC in 2007 at the head of a slate of nominees endorsed by the Missouri Baptist Laymen’s Association (MBLA).
Bruce McCoy, pastor of Canaan Baptist Church, St. Louis, will be nominated for first vice president. Jim Cogdill, director of missions, Cape Girardeau Baptist Association, will be nominated for second vice president. Lisa Albert, wife of Rodney Albert, chairman of the MBC’s Christian Life Commission (CLC) and pastor of Hallsville Baptist Church, will be nominated for recording secretary.
Ralph Sawyer, pastor, First Baptist Church, Wentzville, has declined to run for a second term as MBC president. Sawyer, the first MBC president eligible to run for a second term, said he is prioritizing the needs of his church at this time.
MBLA President Kerry Messer said this slate of nominees speaks volumes about their collective commitment to the work of the local church, MBC and the Southern Baptist Convention (SBC).
“It is without reservation that the MBLA endorses each of these nominees,” Messer said. “They are all highly trusted theologically and are deeply committed to the cause of Christ and the work of the MBC.”
Green, 50, has served as senior pastor of Calvary Baptist for 24 years. During that time Sunday School attendance has grown from about 65 to approximately 550. The church runs 650-700 in worship and gives eight percent of its offerings through the Cooperative Program.
Calvary Baptist is very active in missions with church-to-church partnerships with Romania and Colorado and mission trips made every year to Nicaragua. The church has helped start new works in Missouri and Iowa, and its current labor of love is to help plant a church north of the border in Toronto.
Jay Scribner, who served 28 years as pastor of First Baptist Church, Branson, will nominate Green during the 172nd annual meeting of the MBC in Cape Girardeau Oct. 30-Nov. 1. Scribner said that Green, who was a member of Project 1000, will help maintain the type of consistent conservative polity that Missouri Southern Baptists have been practicing since the late 1990s.
“I have had the privilege in the last few years of nominating some of our presidential candidates, and I’m more than honored to do that,” Scribner said. “I believe in the Project 1000 methodology of the last eight years that has served the Missouri Baptist Convention very well (tied to the prior announcement of candidates to give messengers ample time to evaluate them).
“The structure that we’ve been operating on for about eight years now with the conservative resurgence has served us very well, and we have shown that it is a positive step to take the first vice president and ask him to step into the role as president. Mike has done an excellent job of working with Ralph Sawyer. He’s done an excellent job of being conscientious in his application as first vice president, and he has taken a keen interest in everything that’s been going on this past year with the Missouri Baptist Convention. It just makes good common sense to ask the first vice president to step into the role of president. We’ve shown that in the last eight years since we’ve had this structure in place.”
Green is a fifth-generation Missouri Baptist and a native of De Soto who has been very active within the Southern Baptist Convention (SBC) and MBC. He served on the SBC Committee on Committees, the SBC Committee on Order of Business and the SBC Committee on Nominations. He also served as a trustee at Midwestern Baptist Theological Seminary.
On the MBC level, he was president of the 2004 Pastors’ Conference and a six-year commissioner with the CLC. He served as chairman of the Committee on Order of Business and currently serves as a trustee at Hannibal-LaGrange College.
Green was baptized at First Baptist Church, De Soto, and served on staff at three Missouri Baptist churches, including a time as pastor of Iona Baptist Church before coming to Republic. Active in the community as a longtime pastor in what has grown to be a regional church, he was asked to run for the Republic School District Board and served a total of six years.
“Mike is a leader in our conservative convention,” Scribner said. “He demonstrates that in his preaching. He demonstrates that in his love for people. He demonstrates that in his love for God’s Word, and he demonstrates that in his kingdom ministry.”
Scribner, who served as MBC president in 2000, noted that Green’s long tenure at one church is another indicator that he is fit to be elected to the office of MBC president.
“That reflects that Mike has stability, maturity and the ability to be a strong leader,” Scribner said. “You don’t stay at some place without having good integrity, being able to handle confidentiality, and just a love relationship between the pastor and the people.”
McCoy, 50, is a St. Louis native who has been pastor of Canaan Baptist since 1998. Attendance is up from 230 to more than 400 in Sunday School and more than 500 in morning worship. The church gives 10 percent of its offerings through the Cooperative Program.
He was a member of the LBC Chorale in the early years of Liberty University and was a featured soloist on Jerry Falwell’s Old Time Gospel Hour. He spent seven years as minister of music at the 5,000-member First Baptist Church of Indian Rocks, Fla. His ministry now in Missouri includes service on the MBC Credentials Committee, which has been charged with applying the convention’s single alignment policy adopted by messengers in 2005. Reports circulated last year that MBC Executive Director David Clippard offered McCoy the position of associate executive director, but McCoy elected to remain Canaan’s pastor.
“I am known to confront issues without being combative,” McCoy said. “There really isn’t an ounce of hurt in me. I just try to say what the Lord would have me say, without being angry about it.”
Cogdill, 51, has been DOM in Cape Girardeau since 2003. He earned his doctorate in evangelism from The Southern Baptist Theological Seminary, Louisville, Ky., and has worked for three of the other five Southern Baptist seminaries.
He served as professor of evangelism at Southeastern Baptist Theological Seminary, Wake Forest, N.C.; vice president for academics/dean of the faculty at Midwestern Baptist Theological Seminary, Kansas City; and director of the Leavell Center for Evangelism and Church Health at New Orleans Baptist Theological Seminary. Cogdill also served as pastor of churches in Missouri, Illinois and North Carolina.
Albert, 40, is president of the MBC Ministry Wives Task Force and serves on the MBC Committee on Convention Committees. She serves Hallsville Baptist as a Team Kid teacher and also directs the children’s choir.
At press time, there were no other known announced nominees for the convention’s four offices.