January 27, 2003

Oklahoma pastor nominated for Illinois executive director
___By Michael Leathers
___Associated Baptist Press
___SPRINGFIELD, Ill. (ABP)--A former president of the Baptist General Convention of Oklahoma will be recommended as the next executive director of the Illinois Baptist State Association.
___The IBSA's executive director search committee has picked Wendell Lang, pastor of First Baptist of Pryor, Okla., to succeed Bob Wiley, who stepped down in October 2001 after a tumultuous relationship with some IBSA elected leaders. Lang will be presented to the IBSA's board of directors Jan. 28 during a special meeting in Carlinville, Ill.
___"Wendell is a consensus builder and has a real ability to bring people together and focus them on the mission at hand," said Anthony Jordan, the Oklahoma convention's executive director-treasurer.
___Those traits may be put to the test when, if approved, Lang will take the reins of a state convention grappling with a growing unrest among churches over the IBSA's direction during its leadership transition and plummeting staff morale.
___One of Lang's duties, according to a staff memo from the search committee's chairman, will be to "graciously" review employees to see how they fit into the organization. Staff received the memo from Chairman Kevin Kerr in mid-December. He dispelled a rumor that his committee favored a proposal that called for the new executive director to "demand the resignation" of all staff.
___Such a proposal, Kerr admitted, had been recommended to committee members. While they were "able to understand the reasoning behind such a suggestion," Kerr wrote, they "quickly sought to address the weaknesses this plan seemed to pose."
___Kerr, who is a pastor in Waterloo, Ill., wrote that the new executive director does not intend to demand a blanket resignation.
___The other two candidates rounding out the search committee's top three picks, according to Baptist insiders, were John Yeats, editor of the Baptist Messenger, newspaper of the Oklahoma state convention, and Pat Pajak, pastor of Tabernacle Baptist Church, Decatur, Ill., and a former IBSA vice president.
___If approved, Lang will become the second person connected to the Baptist General Convention of Oklahoma to be named executive director of a state Baptist convention in the past year. David Clippard, the BGCO's associate executive director, was named executive director of the Missouri Baptist Convention in August 2002.

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