BIRMINGHAM, Ala. (BP) – Missouri Baptist Convention executive director John L. Yeats will be nominated for a 23rd term as the Southern Baptist Convention’s recording secretary, Missouri church planter Jon Nelson announced today (May 3).
Nelson, MBC first vice president and pastor of Soma Community Church in Jefferson City, Mo., near historically black Lincoln University, said in a news release, “As a Missouri church planter, officer of the state convention and member of the Missouri Baptist Convention’s executive board, I have witnessed firsthand the servant leadership and expertise of Dr. John L. Yeats.”
In announcing his intent to nominate Yeats at the June 11-12 SBC annual meeting in Birmingham, Ala., Nelson said, “As a young pastor in Missouri, it has been a pleasure to work alongside Dr. Yeats as our executive director, who has a distinct heartbeat for pastors in our state as well as a calm presence in stressful situations.”
The SBC recording secretary is responsible for the record of the proceedings of the Southern Baptist Convention, training volunteers for convention business sessions and the final edit of the SBC Book of Reports and the SBC Annual. The recording secretary also serves as an ex officio member of the SBC Executive Committee, where Yeats has served as vice chairman and Administrative Committee chairman.
Yeats was first elected SBC recording secretary in 1997 and designed the process currently used for the flow of information from the convention floor to the platform and distribution to the Committee on Order of Business.
During a three-year span in Missouri, Yeats led the state convention to increase its Cooperative Program giving to SBC causes by 3.5 percentage points of its then-$14 million budget, to the current 60-40 percentage allocation of CP funds between Missouri and SBC missions and ministries.
Deer Creek Baptist Church in Cuba, Mo., where Yeats is a member gave 10 percent of its undesignated receipts through CP last year, the MBC reported, a total confirmed by data from the SBC’s Annual Church Profile (ACP).
Deer Creek baptized eight people in 2018 and had an average worship attendance of 92, according to ACP.
Prior to his service in Missouri, Yeats was director of communications/public policy for the Louisiana Baptist Convention. He is a former editor of state Baptist papers in Oklahoma and Indiana and has served Southern Baptist churches in six states during 40-plus years of pastoral ministry.
Yeats holds a doctor of ministry degree from Midwestern Baptist Theological Seminary, a master of divinity degree from Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary and an undergraduate degree from Dallas Baptist University.
Yeats, a native of Caddo, Okla., and his wife Sharon, who serves beside him on the convention platform, have three sons and nine grandchildren.