SAN FRANCISCO (ABP) — Bill Wagner, California college president and pastor who also was a long-time employee of the Southern Baptist Convention's International Mission Board, has said he will run for the SBC presidency next year.
Wagner, who wrote How Islam Plans to Change the World in 2004, will join fellow California pastor Wiley Drake as the second person to announce plans for a presidential run when the SBC meets in Indianapolis next year. Critics have said Wagner's book promotes an “anti-Muslim” agenda, although Wagner has said he wants to reach Muslims with the gospel.
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Bill Wagner
Both Drake and Wagner, currently president of Olivet University International, are unique choices for the position in that each leads a small church and lives in California. The convention has never had a president who lives west of Texas.
While it is unclear who will nominate Wagner, IMB trustee Wade Burleson called Wagner's venture into the presidential race a welcome change.
“I … find it refreshing that there is no political machine behind his nomination,” Burleson said. Wagner was unavailable for comment by deadline for this story.
Formerly a professor at Golden Gate Baptist Theological Seminary, Wagner started work as a missionary in Europe in 1965 and became an IMB regional consultant for evangelism and church growth in 1982. He also served as first vice president of the SBC in 2003.
Commenting on his candidacy, Wagner told Baptist Press he found it surprising that the SBC has “never had an International Mission Board missionary as their president, never had someone from a pioneer context [west of Texas or north of Maryland] as its president, never had a pastor of a small church as its president, and never had a trained missional strategist at its helm.”
He is pastor of Snyder Lane Baptist in Rohnert Park, Calif.