Joe Crumpler
Joe Crumpler, widower of Cooperative Baptist Fellowship founder Carolyn Weatherford Crumpler, died June 10 at age 89.
The retired 30-year pastor of Mount Carmel Baptist Church in Cincinnati, was a president of the State Convention of Baptists in Ohio, vice president of the Southern Baptist Convention Pastor’s Conference and trustee of the Baptist Sunday School Board (now LifeWay Christian Resources) before helping to found the North Central affiliate of the Cooperative Baptist Fellowship and serve at its moderator.
Crumpler’s greatest contribution to CBF life, however, may have been marrying his second wife. Carolyn Weatherford, executive director of the Woman’s Missionary Union auxiliary to the Southern Baptist Convention for 15 years, retired at age 59 in 1989 to wed Crumpler, a widower whose wife of 25 years, Eleanor Anne Ford Crumpler, had died seven years earlier.
Not long after the couple returned to Ohio from their wedding trip, Carolyn was approached by Daniel Vestal, then pastor of First Baptist Church of Dunwoody, Ga., and running for president of the Southern Baptist Convention, about joining him as a candidate for first vice president at the 1990 SBC annual meeting in New Orleans.
After their defeat, Vestal convened “A Consultation of Concerned Baptists” in Atlanta to discuss alternate funding mechanisms to the SBC Cooperative Program for moderate churches disenfranchised by a decade of denominational infighting now known as the “conservative resurgence.”
A year later marked formation of the Cooperative Baptist Fellowship, which met for its 25th anniversary General Assembly last week in Greensboro, N.C. Vestal eventually served as the CBF executive coordinator 15 years before retiring in 2012.
Carolyn Crumpler was a member of the interim steering committee that laid groundwork for the new movement and was a member of the first CBF Coordinating Council. She went on to serve as the fourth CBF moderator in 1995-1996 and remained active in CBF life until complications from heart bypass surgery in 2013 put her in a skilled nursing facility. She died Jan. 2, 2015, at age 84.
James Joseph (“Joe”) Crumpler was an Alabama native who served in the military before graduating in 1955 from Howard College — now Samford University — and from New Orleans Baptist Theological Seminary in 1958.
He served churches in Alabama, Ohio and Northern Kentucky before becoming pastor of Mount Carmel Baptist Church, and after retiring he served as an interim pastor at several congregations before finally retiring as pastor of Miamitown Baptist Church in 2014.
Joe Crumpler served as general chairman of the city-wide youth revival in New Orleans in 1950. He was tri-state chairman of the Crusade of the Americas for Indiana, Ohio and Kentucky and a member of the Cincinnati Billy Graham Crusade committee.
He is survived by three children and four grandchildren.
Visitation with the family is scheduled for 4-7 p.m. on Friday, July 8, and a memorial service at noon Saturday, July 9, at Mount Carmel Baptist Church, 8645 Kenwood Rd. in Cincinnati. Visitation on Saturday begins at 10:30 a.m.
In lieu of flowers, the family requests memorial contributions to the North Central Cooperative Baptist Fellowship, 10561 Adventure Lane, Cincinnati, OH 45242 or to the Alzheimer’s Association Greater Cincinnati, 644 Linn Street, Suite 1026, Cincinnati, OH 45203.