By Bob Allen
A memorial service is scheduled for 11 a.m. Saturday, Jan. 18, at Lyndon Baptist Church in Louisville, Ky., for W. Bryant Hicks, a longtime missions professor at Southern Baptist Theological Seminary who died Jan. 12 at age 88.
Hicks, a U.S. Navy veteran, received his master of divinity and doctor of philosophy degrees from Southern Seminary. He was pastor at Buck Run Baptist Church near Frankfort, Ky., 1950-55 before serving 10 years as a missionary in the Philippines appointed by the Southern Baptist Foreign Mission Board. He served there as a pastor and teacher in the Philippine Baptist Theological Seminary.
Southern Seminary trustees hired Hicks as associate professor of Christian missions and world religions in 1965. He was granted tenure in 1969 and promoted to the rank of full professor in 1980.
In 1981, he was named first occupant of the M. Theron Rankin Chair of Foreign Missions, established in honor of a missionary to China and Japan who served from 1944 until his death in 1953 as executive secretary of the FMB, today known as the International Mission Board.
Hicks retired as a full-time faculty member in 1993 and continued to teach as a senior professor until 2006.
Survivors include his widow, Peggy, a daughter and two sons, eight grandchildren, three great grandchildren and a fourth great grandchild on the way.
Visitation is scheduled to begin at 9:30 a.m. Saturday at Lyndon Baptist Church, where Hicks was a longtime member. Memorial gifts may be made to Lyndon Baptist Church for missions or Woman’s Missionary Union.