EthicsDaily.com has cited John Upton, executive director of the Baptist General Association of Virginia, as one of several “proactive Baptists who have excercised constructive influence for the common good and/or deserve to be watched in the year ahead.”
EthicsDaily.com is the online news service of the Baptist Center for Ethics, a BGAV ministry partner.
Upton is “reshaping an old denominational structure into a 21st-century organization with an idea called ‘glocal missions' and partnerships with entrepreneurial entities,” wrote the BCE's executive director, Robert Parham, in an editorial, “Baptists of the Year.”
“The BGAV was the only Baptist state convention that voted to apply for membership in the Baptist World Alliance and adopted a 2005 budget which made Virginia Baptists the BWA's single largest funding entity,” Parham wrote.
Other Baptists mentioned in the article were three Britons: Doug Balfour, the driving force behind the Micah Challenge, an evangelical Christian campaign to cut global poverty by half by 2015; David Coffee, president elect of the Baptist World Alliance; and Tony Peck, newly-elected general secretary of the European Baptist Federation.
Staff report