Posted: 10/26/07
One blogging minister
nominates another for first VP
By Ken Camp
Managing Editor
A Baptist blogger from Mineral Wells plans to nominate a Baptist blogger from Houston for first vice president of the Baptist General Convention of Texas.
David Montoya, pastor of Calvary Baptist Church in Mineral Wells, has announced he will nominate Lee Saunders, minister of church development at Garden Oaks Baptist Church in Houston, for office during the BGCT annual meeting in Amarillo.
| Lee Saunders |
“He has been an active part of BGCT life, is familiar with our history and heritage, and is familiar with the controversies within the convention in recent months,” Montoya said.
“On his blog, he has offered wise, temperate responses as events have unfolded over the past year.”
Saunders, 50, described himself as an “under-the-radar kind of person” who never particularly aspired to elected office in the state convention but agreed to allow his nomination because Texas Baptists “need a choice.”
“I think I could bring in some diversity and contribute to a spirit of unity” in the BGCT, he said.
In an Oct. 23 posting on his weblog— deepintheheart.wordpress.com —Saunders voiced his hope for restored trust in the BGCT.
“The BGCT is not going either to the liberal left or the fundamentalist right. I think it is accurate to say that it is safe from both of those extremes. But it is in trouble, as a result of poor decisions made by the current administration, it is in transition, and it has lost the trust of many of its supporting congregations,” he wrote. “At this particular point in its history, with other factors related to paradigm shifts taking place in the way we do church and ministry, that’s not a good place to be.”
Texas Baptists need to fulfill the promise of recent themes, such as “Together, we can do more,” even though “there are forces and pressures pulling and pushing on the BGCT right now that have the potential to pull it apart.”
Regardless of the outcome of votes at the annual meeting, Saunders urged readers of his blog “not to burn any bridges.”
Prior to joining the staff at Garden Oaks Baptist Church in February 2006, he was assistant principal at Clay Road Baptist School in Houston. Before taking that administrative post, he was chair of the Bible department at Fort Bend Baptist Academy in Sugar Land.
He also was on the faculty of George Sanchez High School in Houston and has served four churches in Texas, Arizona, Missouri and Kentucky as minister of education and youth.
Saunders is a graduate of Grand Canyon University in Phoenix, Ariz., and Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary. He is a former Home Mission Board summer missionary, and he has worked as a project coordinator for the World Changers program of the North American Mission Board each summer since 2000.
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