ATLANTA (ABP) — Robert Nash has received the nomination for the global missions coordinator position at the Cooperative Baptist Fellowship. CBF council members will vote to approve the nomination at their annual meeting June 21 in Atlanta.
The nomination comes after a year of interim service by Jack Snell, who held the position since the resignation of Barbra Baldridge. Baldridge resigned May 31 of last year amid unspecified personal reasons. She and her husband, Gary, had served in the top position for five years until Gary Baldridge retired in 2004 to pursue a writing career.
“I am humbled by the confidence that the search committee has placed in me as its nominee for this position and awed by the prospect of ministry alongside CBF's field personnel and staff in the U.S. and around the world,” Nash said in a CBF statement after hearing of his nomination.
Search committee chair Tim Brendle said the committee received input for the nomination process from staff, missionaries and church members. Nash stood out from the others, he said.
“We were blessed with the opportunity to review many strong resumes and to consider multiple candidates who were qualified to do this job,” Tim Brendle, the search committee chair, said in a CBF release. “Rob Nash truly has a heart for missions and the capacity to express our shared missions calling in fresh and challenging ways. I believe he can kindle new excitement in our churches and among our field personnel.”
Nash's bid is slightly unusual in that he has not worked full-time on the mission field, nor has he held previous employment by CBF. Snell was a former pastor who led CBF missions efforts in Asia, and the Baldridges worked as missionaries for 17 years in Africa. Keith Parks, the first missions coordinator of CBF, was previously head of the Southern Baptist Foreign Mission Board and a revered missionary worker in Asia and North Africa.
Nash grew up with missionary parents in the Philippines. Since then, the 47-year-old religion professor has traveled and studied in more than 30 countries in Asia, the Middle East, Africa, Europe and South America. He received a masters of divinity from Southern Baptist Theological Seminary and serves as dean and associate professor of religion and international studies at Shorter College in Rome, Ga. He has also held various pastor positions in Kentucky and Georgia.
Nash, his wife, Guyeth, and their two children are members of First Baptist Church in Rome, Ga.
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