ATLANTA (ABP) — Gary Baldridge, who with his wife has led the Cooperative Baptist Fellowship's global missions effort for five years, will leave CBF at the end of the year to return to a career in writing.
Daniel Vestal, CBF coordinator, told the group's Coordinating Council Oct. 14 that Barbara Baldridge will become interim coordinator Jan. 1, assuming the duties she shared with her husband. And Vestal added, “Hopefullly, this council will in time elect her as [sole] coordinator of missions.”
Gary Baldridge, 53, who was a newspaper reporter before becoming a missionary 25 years ago, told Associated Baptist Press he has been “moving toward writing full-time” for about a decade. “The timing never has been right until now.” He plans to do free-lance magazine journalism and will try to publish a novel and screenplay he has written.
The Fellowship surprised many people in 1999 when it selected the husband and wife to share the top missions post, succeeding longtime missions icon Keith Parks. The Baldridges, who previously served as field missionaries for CBF, oversaw an annual missions budget of $9 million and a missionary force of 153 scattered around the world.
Barbara Baldridge is the only woman among CBF's executive management. A vacant position of administrative coordinator was formerly filled by a woman, Reba Cobb. A search committee seeking Cobb's successor expects to present its candidate in February, Vestal said.
The Coordinating Council has not been asked to start a search process, but its personnel committee will be asked to consider Barbara Badridge as sole missions leader, said CBF moderator Bob Setzer, pastor of First Baptist Church in Macon, Ga. Setzer, CBF's top elected official, said Barbara Baldridge is “the obvious heir apparent, and I feel very good about her staying on and leading us.”
The council later approved a recommendation for Barbara Baldridge to continue as coordinator until the February Coordinating Council meeting, at which time it is expected to hear a recommendation from the personnel committee and global missions team.
Vestal praised both Baldridges for their five years of leadership, noting: “Gary Baldridge has served with distinction as an effective coordinator in global missions,” Vestal said. “He has helped nurture and deepen CBF's passion for social justice and ministry to the most neglected. We will miss him.”
Gary Baldridge predicted handing off leadership solely to Barbara “will be smooth.” She has assumed added responsibilities each year, he told ABP.
“The Fellowship has been so very good to me,” he said. “There is so much freedom to be unorthodox.”
The Baldridges served as Southern Baptist missionaries for 17 years in Zambia and several other countries, resigning in 1994 to go to work for the Fellowship.
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