Leader who warned of Islamic takeover hired to aid SBC’s world mission effort

RICHMOND, Va. (ABP) — David Clippard, the former Missouri Baptist Convention executive who earned national headlines when he said Islam has a plan to “conquer and occupy” the United States, was hired Dec. 10 by the Southern Baptist Convention's world missions agency to enlist Baptist churches to spread the gospel to non-Christians worldwide.

According to a news release from the International Mission Board, Clippard will serve as managing director of the IMB's church services team. He will use his new position to enable all Southern Baptist churches to reach the world's 6,000 unreached people groups, the release said. He is especially interested in involving young pastors in the outreach.

Clippard won national attention in when he preached a sermon in 2006 to the Missouri convention claiming the “real threat” to the United States is that “Islam has a strategic plan to conquer and occupy America.”

He claimed the Saudi Arabian government paid for 15,000 Muslim college students to come to North America to study and funded scores of Islamic study centers and mosques here with the intention of taking the continent for Islam. “They are after our sons and daughters, our students,” he said.

Hired in 2002 as the executive director-treasurer for Missouri's Southern Baptist-related convention, Clippard was later fired by the same conservative leaders who hired him. Himself a conservative, Clippard ultimately failed in demonstrating the solidarity for which convention leaders had hoped.

He was fired April 10 after divisions within the convention's Executive Board emerged regarding leadership styles, spending and real estate. He had recently settled a harassment lawsuit involving convention controller Carol Kaylor and been charged with having an “autocratic and dismissive” leadership style.

Clippard, who has also worked with the Baptist General Convention of Oklahoma and Evangelism Explosion International, spent much of his tenure at the Missouri convention working with projects involving El Salvador, Romania, Iraq and Turkey.