By Robert Dilday
Virginia Baptist pastor Nancy Stanton McDaniel will be nominated in November for first vice president of the Baptist General Association of Virginia — a position whose incumbent for almost a decade and a half has been elected BGAV president the following year.
If that pattern prevails McDaniel would be the first female pastor to hold the BGAV’s top elected spot.
McDaniel, pastor of Rhoadesville (Va.) Baptist Church, about 30 miles west of Fredericksburg, will be nominated at the BGAV’s annual meeting Nov. 11-12 in Hampton, announced retired Richmond pastor Bert Browning.
For 14 years BGAV first vice presidents have been nominated — and invariably elected — to serve as the state association’s president, though the practice is not mandated by BGAV bylaws. The bylaws do restrict both offices to one-year terms and incumbents cannot immediately succeed themselves.
If McDaniel is nominated and elected as president in 2015, that action would be consistent with a more than 50-year-old practice of rotating the BGAV presidency between ministers and laypersons — another well-established tradition that isn’t required by bylaws.
“Nancy and I have known each other since our Baptist Student Union days at the College of William and Mary over 40 years ago,” said Browning, retired pastor of Huguenot Road Baptist Church in Richmond. “Through those many years of friendship, I have witnessed firsthand her spiritual gifts as well as her leadership capabilities. She has served Virginia Baptist churches and the Baptist General Association of Virginia in a number of capacities and has done so with dignity and grace. We will all benefit from her experience, her wisdom and her deep sense of responsibility.”
Though McDaniel would be the first female pastor to serve as president, the BGAV has long elected women to the presidency — including one who, if elected, McDaniel would likely succeed. Ann Brown, a Gretna, Va., woman currently serving as first vice president, will be nominated for president in November.
McDaniel has been pastor at the Rhoadesville church for 14 years. For 20 years prior to that she was minister of education, and later associate pastor for education, at First Baptist Church in Martinsville, Va. She holds degrees from the College of William and Mary in Williamsburg, Va., and Southeastern Baptist Theological Seminary in Wake Forest, N.C.
She has served several terms on the Virginia Baptist Mission Board, where she chaired its education subcommittee. Active in both partnership missions and the Goshen Baptist Association, McDaniel also has been moderator of both the Cooperative Baptist Fellowship of Virginia and Virginia Baptist Women in Ministry.
Other than McDaniel and Brown, no other candidates have been announced for BGAV offices.