The two top leadership roles for Cooperative Baptist Fellowship Global Missions soon will be vacant, as Sam Harrell leaves his post as associate coordinator July 31. He has been named full-time coordinator of Africa Exchange, which serves vulnerable children in every province of Kenya through Child Development Centers.
His departure comes just a few months after the resignation of Global Missions Coordinator Steven Porter, who left to focus on writing and more direct missions. A search team currently is working to recommend a new coordinator. In the meantime, CBF Executive Coordinator Paul Baxley is overseeing Global Missions.
Sam Harrell
The Global Missions enterprise accounts for nearly half the expenditures in CBF’s annual budget and has been a hallmark of the organization since its founding in 1991. The desire to support foreign missionaries who in conscience no longer could work for the Southern Baptist Convention helped spark creation of CBF.
Harrell and his wife, Melody, joined the CBF missions team in 1999 and served 16 years with CBF in Kenya, where he was born and raised as the child of Baptist missionaries. He was named associate coordinator in 2015. In that role, he facilitates the work of CBF field personnel in 20 countries.
Africa Exchange is an organization the Harrells founded 25 years ago and have led in a volunteer capacity. A July 14 news release from the organization said its expanding work now requires a full-time director. The nonprofit currently operates programs in 12 locations under the leadership of Mark Okello, Kenya program manager.
“With the excellent support of our program manager and the recently established Africa Exchange Advisory Group in Kenya, we are uniquely poised at this critical juncture to expand the work of enhancing the resilience of vulnerable children, communities and the environment in marginalized areas of Kenya,” Harrell said.
Africa Exchange is a partner ministry with CBF Global Missions.
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