By Bob Allen
Former Cooperative Baptist Fellowship moderator Keith Herron will step down Sept. 21 as pastor of Holmeswood Baptist Church in Kansas City, Mo., to move to a St. Louis church affiliated with the United Church of Christ.
Last Sunday, Herron, CBF moderator in 2012-2013, was elected senior minister of the St. Lucas United Church of Christ in southwest St. Louis. He begins officially on Oct. 1 at the congregation formed by German immigrants in 1880.
In what he termed a “pre-announcement” to his formal resignation statement next Sunday, Herron said at a quarterly church business meeting Wednesday night that he doesn’t think of the move as leaving CBF but rather following a calling to “another part of the Christian family.”
“In my theology of church, I believe the kingdom of God begins in the church and is not secondary to the denomination as though the denomination gives identity to the church,” said Herron, who holds degrees from Baylor University, Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary and Garrett-Evangelical Theological Seminary. “I hold that it is the church that gives identity to the larger body.”
“I will continue to hold dear my CBF family and friends but will not be at the table for everyday CBF life,” Herron said. “I am fully supportive of the direction of the CBF and have given and received fully much love and grace by my involvement as a CBF pastor.”
Herron is one of 24 men and women elected moderator of the CBF, a group of about 1,800 moderate-to-progressive congregations that began in 1991 to distance their identity from the Southern Baptist Convention in response to that denomination’s rightward shift in leadership.
Herron said the UCC, an organization of four strands of Christian groups that came together in the 1950s believing their differences were smaller than their common traditions, shares strong stands on issues such as racism, equality and social justice that are also important to CBF.
The Alliance of Baptists, an earlier SBC breakaway group that is smaller and generally considered more liberal than the CBF, entered a “Partnership in Mission and Ministry” with the United Church of Christ in 2003. A number of Alliance congregations are dually aligned with the UCC, including Harmony Creek Baptist Church in Dayton, Ohio, where current Alliance President Michael Castle is pastor.
Herron, who came as pastor of Holmeswood Baptist Church in 2001, served in CBF leadership as moderator-elect, moderator and past moderator in three years marked by the most change in the organization’s brief history.
Herron accepted the moderator’s gavel at the close of the 2012 General Assembly in Fort Worth, Texas, which saw passage of a massive organizational restructuring recommended after a two-year study of the CBF’s effectiveness and efficiency in the 21st century. Much of Herron’s focus as moderator was implementation of the plan, which continued under his successor, immediate past moderator Bill McConnell, and will continue under current moderator Kasey Jones.
At the end of June 2012, Daniel Vestal, the second permanent CBF executive coordinator, retired after 15 years. Herron and other leaders decided to go with an interim coordinator, selecting Pat Anderson, a member of the CBF staff who previously served as a state coordinator in Florida and as CBF moderator in the mid-1990s.
In March 2013, CBF leaders elected Suzii Paynter as the third CBF executive coordinator and the first woman to hold the position. A number of longtime upper-level employees have moved on to be replaced by younger leaders.
In their spare time, CBF leaders moved the organization’s headquarters from the Atlanta campus of Mercer University to downtown Decatur, an in-town suburb more accessible by public transportation, to a space designed for the new staff structure.
Herron said he is saddened to leave Holmeswood Baptist Church but believes God is guiding him in a new direction. “I have sensed the stewardship of being your pastor has been my privilege to live out, and I leave as I came knowing God has been with us as we’ve traveled this path together,” he said.
The names and years of service of past and current CBF moderators are: John Hewett (1991-1992), Pat Ayres (1992-1993), Hardy Clemons (1993-1994), Carolyn Crumpler (1994-1995), Pat Anderson (1995-1996), Lavonn Brown (1996-1997), Martha Smith (1997-1998), John Tyler (1998-1999), Sarah Frances Anders (1999-2000), Donna Forrester (2000-2001), Jim Baucom (2001-2002), Phill Martin (2002-2003), Cynthia Holmes (2003-2004), Bob Setzer (2004-2005), Joy Yee (2005-2006) Emmanuel McCall (2006-2007), Harriet Harral (2007-2008), Jack Glasgow (2008-2009), Hal Bass (2009-2010), Christy McMillin-Goodwin (2010-2011), Colleen Burroughs (2011-2012), Keith Herron (2012-2013), Bill McConnell (2013-2014) and Kasey Jones (2014-2015).