Three S.C. firemen had ties to SBC churches. At least three of the nine Charleston, S.C., firefighters killed June 18 in a furniture store blaze were connected with Southern Baptist churches in the area. Capt. William “Billy” Hutchinson, 48, was a member of Pinecrest Baptist Church in Charleston. Engineer Brad Baity, 37, who drove the fire department's big trucks, attended Charleston Baptist Church. Capt. Mike Benke, 49, was a member of Palmetto Community Church in Charleston. The deadly fire started about 7 p.m. June 18 in a trash bin outside a Sofa Super Store. As firefighters tried to extinguish the flames, the fire spread to a porch and blew open the back door to the showroom, according to the local newspaper. The nine died attempting to rescue store employees they believed to be trapped inside the burning store. (BP)
Founder of Luther rice Seminary dies. Robert Gee Witty, a pioneer in the development of non-residential theological education and doctor of ministry studies, died at the age of 100 on June 20 in a Jacksonville, Fla., hospice. Witty, in 1962, was the founder of Luther Rice Seminary in Jacksonville, Fla., which relocated in 1991 to Lithonia, Ga., and last year became Luther Rice University. Witty, who was in the ministry 86 years according to family members, served as Luther Rice Seminary's president from 1968-82 and chancellor until 1987. (BP)
Trustee McKissic resigns from Southwestern board. Dwight McKissic, the Southern Baptist pastor frequently at odds with fellow trustees at Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary, has resigned from the board of the Fort Worth, Texas, school. Pastor of Cornerstone Baptist Church in nearby Arlington, Texas, McKissic said he chose to step down in order to “return to the place I was prior to being a trustee.” McKissic, one of the most prominent African-American pastors in the Southern Baptist Convention, was the lone dissenter when trustees voted last October to forbid the seminary from employing professors who advocate speaking in tongues. Earlier, in a 2006 chapel sermon at Southwestern, McKissic said that since his days as a student at the seminary, he has used a “private prayer language,” considered by many a variation of tongues-speaking. In March, trustees tried to permanently expel McKissic from the board. “My involvement as a trustee has been a huge distraction from my ministry priorities for the past nine months,” McKissic said. “I've devoted too much mental, physical, emotional and even spiritual energy to matters resulting from the aftermath of my chapel sermon.” (ABP)
Decatur church calls woman. First Baptist Church of Decatur, Ga., has become the largest church associated with the Southern Baptist Convention or the Cooperative Baptist Fellowship to call a woman as senior pastor. In a closed business session after Sunday morning worship June 17, nearly 400 members voted to call Julie Pennington-Russell as minister. The proposal, approved by a show of hands, went unchallenged in a discussion session. Pennington-Russell, 46, is currently senior pastor of Calvary Baptist Church in Waco, Texas, a post she has held since 1998. She had previously worked as a pastor at Nineteenth Avenue Baptist Church in San Francisco. She will begin her new job Aug. 19, succeeding Gary Parker, who resigned. The church, with 2,700 members, is located in suburban Atlanta. (ABP)