Baptist Briefs_122203

Posted: 12/19/03

Baptist Briefs

Johnson leaving WMU. Trudy Johnson, national director of Christian Women's Job Corps through Woman's Missionary Union, has resigned to take a new position at St. Vincent's Hospital in Birmingham, Ala. Debra Berry, adult ministry consultant with WMU, will give interim leadership to the program while a new director is sought.

Southwestern awards degrees. Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary awarded 274 degrees Dec. 12 in winter commencement ceremonies at Travis Avenue Baptist Church in Fort Worth.

CBF offers kids' camps. The Cooperative Baptist Fellowship will partner with Passport to offer camps for children completing third through sixth grade under a new program called PASSPORTkids. The camps will be directed by veteran children's minister Mark McClintock, who recently left the staff of Seventh & James Baptist Church in Waco. For 2004, camps will be held in Virginia, North Carolina, Tennessee, Alabama and Missouri. The four-day camps run from mid-June through the end of July. For more information, visit www.passport-kids.org.

Theologian Henry dies. Carl F. H. Henry, famed evangelical theologian and first editor of Christianity Today, died Dec. 7 in Watertown, Wis., following a lengthy illness. He was 90 years old. In 1977, Time magazine called Henry the leading theologian of American evangelicalism. He is credited with helping shape the defense of evangelicalism as intellectually credible. A Southern Baptist, Henry was a member of Capitol Hill Baptist Church in Washington, D.C.

Barrows donates hymnals to Southern. Cliff Barrows, longtime music director for the Billy Graham Evangelistic Association, has donated his collection of 298 hymnals to Boyce Centennial Library at Southern Baptist Theological Seminary. The collection includes songbooks from Graham crusades, compilations by Barrows, along with solo and duet songbooks used by the Graham ministry. It also includes hymnals purchased by Barrows in every country where Graham held a crusade.

Johnson to lead Criswell. Jerry Johnson has been named president of the Criswell Center for Biblical Studies, which includes Criswell College and Criswell Communications. Johnson, 39, has been dean of Boyce College at Southern Baptist Theological Seminary in Louisville, Ky. He succeeds Richard Wells, who resigned to take a pastorate in South Dakota. Johnson gained notoriety in the 1980s when as a young trustee of Southern Seminary, he accused then-President Roy Honeycutt of not believing the Bible. Johnson went on to serve the seminary board as chairman in the early years of President Al Mohler's administration. He later resigned his Colorado pastorate to enter doctoral studies in Christian ethics at Southern, then joined the seminary staff. He is a native of Malakoff and a 1986 graduate of Criswell College.

Frost leaves NAMB for New York. Gary Frost, vice president for strategic partnerships with the North American Mission Board, has been named executive director of the Metropolitan New York Baptist Association. Before taking the administrative post with the Southern Baptist Convention mission board in 2001, he was pastor of an Ohio church and served two terms as the SBC's second vice president.

Alabama Baptists support commandments displays. Messengers to the Alabama Baptist State Convention voiced their support for publicly displaying the Ten Commandments. Meeting at Cottage Hill Baptist Church in Mobile, messengers overwhelmingly adopted a Ten Commandments resolution that encouraged elected officials to "uphold righteousness, acknowledge the biblical foundations of government and contend for the right of religious expression provided for the American people within the Constitution of the United States of America."