BOWLING GREEN, Ky. (ABP) — Continuing a recent trend of electing young leaders, the Kentucky Baptist Convention's new top three officers are under age 40. Darren Gaddis, 37, was elected president; Kevin Smith, 39, was elected first vice president; and Chad Fugitt, 27, was elected second vice president.
All three officers also have current ties to Southern Baptist Theological Seminary, a conservative Southern Baptist school. Gaddis and Fugitt are pursuing doctor of ministry degrees from Southern, and Smith is an assistant professor of church history at the Louisville-based seminary.
A total of 1,428 messengers registered for the Nov. 14-15 annual meeting at First Baptist Church of Bowling Green, Ky. That was a decline from last year's total of 1,814 messengers.
Gaddis, pastor of Central Baptist Church in Corbin, won the seat by a vote of 792-403 over Steve Ayers, pastor of Hillvue Heights Baptist Church in Bowling Green, Ky.
Gaddis was nominated by former state convention president Don Mathis of Bowling Green, Ky. In his nomination speech, Mathis echoed leaders from this year's Southern Baptist Convention meeting with his assertion that elected officers should come from churches with strong records of support for the Cooperative Program, the denominational budget that funds the SBC and state conventions.
“The bottom line is the Cooperative Program does matter,” Mathis said while nominating Gaddis. “You just can't spell convention president without ‘CP.'”
During a post-election interview, Gaddis said his goal as president will be to promote the Cooperative Program and Kentucky Baptists Connect, the state convention's five-year ministry initiative.
In the only other contested race, Smith, pastor of Watson Memorial Baptist Church in Louisville, Ky., was elected first vice president by a vote of 423-208 over former second vice president Skip Alexander, pastor of Campbellsville Baptist Church. Smith, an African-American, was nominated by Bill Henard of Lexington, who told messengers: “To my knowledge, the Kentucky Baptist Convention has never elected an African-American to any leadership position in our convention.”
Actually, Smith is at least the second African-American elected as a state convention officer. In 1971, just a few years after the height of the civil-rights movement, Charles King, who was pastor of Corinthian Baptist Church in Frankfort, Ky., was elected second vice president.
In other business, Kentucky Baptists adopted a $24 million Cooperative Program goal for the 2007-08 budget. The goal, a 1.86 percent increase over the current budget, includes 63.3 percent for Kentucky Baptist ministries and 36.7 percent for Southern Baptist Convention causes. The SBC portion is an increase from the current budget allocation of 36.35 percent.
For the second time in three years, a lack of a quorum during the closing session kept KBC messengers from adopting resolutions or conducting other business.
Rather than adopting resolutions, messengers heard a brief report from Dan Summerlin, the chairman of the resolution committee, about the measures that would have been proposed, including items opposing abortion, embryonic stem cell research and expanded gambling.
Summerlin, pastor of Lone Oak First Baptist Church in Paducah, Ky., said the committee also declined to recommend a pair of proposed resolutions introduced by messengers on the issue of public schools.
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— With additional reporting by Western Recorder correspondent Ken Walker.