Hedger prepares to take on MBC missions post
By Allen Palmeri
Associate Editor
JEFFERSON CITY—Rick Hedger, missions awareness director for the Illinois Baptist State Association, will become the new partnership missions specialist for the Missouri Baptist Convention (MBC), effective Jan. 1.
Hedger, 51, is a native of Jefferson County who has served for 23 years as a local church pastor and a staff minister, leading four churches to be heavily involved in missions.
“I have personally known Rick Hedger for several years, and I am confident that he will bring the same passion for missions that has been the hallmark of the partnership missions department since its formation,” said MBC Interim Executive Director David Tolliver.
Hedger’s zeal for missions became most evident when he led Calvary Baptist Church, Neosho, to be involved in missions locally, nationally, and internationally from 1998-2007. With the International Mission Board, he has been a partner, trainer, and keynote speaker. He and the churches he has pastored have been involved in direct missions in Senegal, Gambia, Guinea-Bissau, Ghana, West Africa, southeast Kansas, and in Neosho among the Hmong and Hispanic peoples.
Rick’s wife, Sandra, who is also a native of Jefferson County, has been involved in women’s ministry and missions within the local church and internationally. She currently serves in administration with Real Encounter Ministries, a Springfield-based evangelism outreach.
The Hedgers have two children who are both oriented toward ministry. Joshua is a staff minister at Forest Park Baptist Church, Joplin, and Kaila is a student at Midwestern Baptist Theological Seminary, Kansas City.
Rick Hedger, who currently serves as a trustee for Southwest Baptist University, has previously served as associational evangelism director and adjunct professor at Golden Gate Baptist Theological Seminary, Mill Valley, Calif.
One of his core values is to live a missional life and to lead others toward missional living.