A product of Southern Baptist missionaries in Singapore is in line to lead the Cooperative Baptist Fellowship, a group that separated from the Southern Baptist Convention 25 years ago over differences including women’s leadership in the church.
Shauw Chin Capps
Shauw Chin Capps, a current member of the CBF Governing Board, will be nominated as moderator-elect of the 1,800-church Fellowship June 24 at the group’s 2016 General Assembly in Greensboro, N.C., according to a nominating committee report released June 7.
A social worker who specializes in cases involving victims of rape and child abuse, Chin is in line to lead the organization in 2017-2018.
Capps was born in Jakarta, Indonesia, but moved to Singapore at age 5 so she and her siblings could get a better education.
After one of her sisters returned home from college in the United States declaring herself a Christian, young Shauw Chin began exploring her own faith. Through a local Baptist church she met Janice Capps, who with her husband, Roger, served 32 years as a missionary to Malaysia, Singapore and Bulgaria before retiring from the Southern Baptist International Mission Board in 2003. Their son, Paul, would become her future husband, but they didn’t start dating until they both attended different colleges in the United States.
Capps enrolled originally at Indiana University but transferred to Baylor University, where she received a bachelor’s degree in social work in 1994. She went on to receive a master’s degree from the Carver School of Social Work at Southern Baptist Theological Seminary in 1996 and worked a decade as a therapist and program director for a rape crisis center and child abuse prevention home visitation program in Louisville, Ky.
Since 2003 she has served as executive director of Hope Haven of the Lowcountry, a children’s advocacy and rape crisis center in Beaufort, S.C. A member of the Baptist Church of Beaufort, a CBF partner congregation, Capps said she is humbled and excited to be stepping into leadership as the movement celebrates its 25th anniversary.
“As a social worker at heart who advocates every day for the least of these, I am energized by the Christ-centered and holistic ministries that CBF invests in locally as well as across the globe,” she said in a press release. “My own faith journey began because of the grace-filled work of Baptist missionaries, and I am eternally grateful. Christ’s love compels me to give back in the form of tangible service to strengthen the impact of our Fellowship in bringing the love and grace of Christ to every corner of the world.”
Capps is in line to succeed Doug Dortch, pastor of Mountain Brook Baptist Church in Birmingham, Ala., the current moderator-elect whose one-year term as moderator begins when the final gavel comes down closing the June 20-24 General Assembly in Greensboro. Presiding this year is Matt Cook, pastor of First Baptist Church in Wilmington, N.C., who will remain in leadership another year in the office of past moderator.
Capps becomes the 27th person selected for the moderator post and the 12th woman. She is the first not born in the United States. The other Asian-American, Joy Yee, who served as moderator in 2005-2009, was born in San Francisco.