GREENSBORO, N.C. (ABP) — As the annual meeting of the Southern Baptist Convention rapidly approaches, the field of officer candidates is rapidly widening — most recently with a fourth candidate for the second vice-presidential post.
Mark Edlund, the executive director of the Colorado Baptist General Convention, told Associated Baptist Press June 8 he will nominate Bob Bender for the spot during the convention's meeting June 13-14 in Greensboro, N.C. Bender is the pastor of First Baptist Church of Black Forest in Colorado Springs.
“He is one of our state's most rapidly emerging leaders,” Edlund said, in an e-mail statement. “Bender is a mission-minded pastor who exemplifies who we are as Southern Baptists.”
Bender has been pastor at the Colorado congregation since 2003. In the 2 1/2 years since then, Edlund said, the church has doubled in weekly attendance and built a new sanctuary.
Bender said he gladly accepts the nomination and hopes SBC leadership will “embrace the rank and file” members of the SBC in its goal to fulfill the great commission.
“People around the world need to hear the gospel once before people in America hear it five times,” Bender said, referring to his belief that SBC churches should strongly support the Cooperative Program, which is the unified budget system for supporting the denomination's missions and ministries.
According to Edlund, Bender has acted on that belief in his own church, which has committed to giving $1 million to the program in the next 10 years. Edlund also said Bender “initiated and chaired” the Colorado convention's “10 X 10 Task Force,” which aims to have all Colorado Baptist congregations giving 10 percent of their undesignated receipts to the Cooperative Program within 10 years.
Colorado convention reports list Bender's church as having given $60,531 to the Cooperative Program in 2005. The church's total undesignated receipts were $620,195 during that period.
“I'm not at a place where we need to make [a 10 percent contribution of undesignated funds to the Cooperative Program] a litmus test, but we need to put our money where our mouth is. I firmly believe that,” Bender said. He was referring to the suggestion by some Southern Baptists that the denomination's leadership should come from congregations that forward a tithe or more of their income to the SBC's budget.
Bender will join three others in the campaign for vice president — North Carolina pastor J. D. Greear, Jay Adkins, from Louisiana, and California pastor Wiley Drake. Others have announced they will nominate each man for the post.
Greear is the pastor of The Summit Church in Durham, N.C. Drake is pastor of First Southern Baptist Church of Buena Park, Calif. SBC records show that both congregations contributed around 1 percent of their undesignated receipts to the Cooperative Program last year.
In recent years, many SBC leaders have come from megachurches that contribute far less than a tithe of their undesignated funds — in some cases, less than 1 percent — to the Cooperative Program. Many rank-and-file Southern Baptists, spurred on by several pastors who write prominent blogs, have pointed to that and other perceived problems in the denomination as reasons to come to Greensboro and advocate for reform.
As a result, there will be at least three men running for the convention presidency and as many as four running for the first vice-presidential slot. In addition, several contentious business items are expected to come to the convention's floor.
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— Robert Marus contributed to this story