By Bob Allen
The Cooperative Baptist Fellowship departed briefly from its official agenda in Friday morning’s business session to voice prayer for a former moderator facing surgery.
CBF Moderator Keith Herron, senior pastor of Holmeswood Baptist Church in Kansas City, Mo., voiced prayer for Carolyn Weatherford Crumpler, the fourth CBF moderator who held office 1995-95, scheduled for triple-bypass surgery at 7:30 a.m. Friday in Ohio.
“Carolyn is a dear, dear one to all of us,” Herron said at the start of today’s business session.
Crumpler, 83, was executive director of the Southern Baptist Convention’s Woman’s Missionary Union from 1974 until 1989. She retired at age 59 to become a pastor’s wife, marrying Cincinnati pastor Joe Crumpler.
In 1990 she ran unsuccessfully for first vice president of the SBC alongside Daniel Vestal, the moderate candidate who also lost, setting stage for the formation of the alternative Cooperative Baptist Fellowship a year later.
Crumpler, a strong advocate for women in ministry, was one of 33 women present in 1983 for the founding of what is now called Baptist Women in Ministry, a support and advocacy organization that celebrated its 30th anniversary to kick off this year’s CBF General Assembly June 26-28 in Greensboro, N.C.
Crumpler was 2010 recipient of annual courage award from the William H. Whitsett Heritage Society, accepting the honor at that year’s CBF General Assembly in Charlotte, N.C.
“This morning we lift up Carolyn and Joe Crumpler and offer them up to the Lord for safety and for keeping,” Herron said. “They are gifts of God to us.”