Board to honor Wade, vote on Everett for Executive Director

Posted: 2/15/08

Board to honor Wade, vote on
Everett for Executive Director

By Ken Camp

Managing Editor

DALLAS—The Baptist General Convention of Texas Executive Board will honor a recently retired executive director Feb. 25 and vote on a nominee for his replacement the next morning.

Executive director nominee Randel Everett and his wife, Sheila, will be available to meet directors of the board individually throughout the day Feb. 25. At a retirement dinner that evening, directors will recognize Charles Wade for his eight years of service as executive director. Wade retired Jan. 31.

The next morning, the executive director search committee will present Everett to the full board with their recommendation he be considered for the post. Everett is scheduled to address the board, share his Christian testimony and respond to questions.

In other business, the Executive Board is expected to:

• Receive both internal and external audit reports.

• Act on several recommendations from its administration support committee.

• Consider proposals from its institutional relations committee.

The agenda for the Feb. 26 board meeting will not be finalized until after committees meet Feb. 25.

In a mailing to the Executive Board, Search Committee Chairman Ken Hugghins outlined key reasons his committee recommended Everett for executive director.

“Dr. Everett is visionary, creative, and entrepreneurial,” Hugghins wrote. “He is also collaborative in his leadership style. With the help of BGCT staff, the Executive Board, and our varied churches, he will explore new approaches and affirm successful initiatives in ministry among the churches. He is open to, and appreciated by, younger pastors and leaders. He is comfortable and conversant with new technologies and approaches to organization and methodology. He is culturally aware.”

Varied experience

Hugghins also pointed to Everett’s varied experience in ministry.

“He served on the staff of one of the original megachurches; he has pastored a variety of churches in Texas, Arkansas, Florida and Virginia; he has served in denominational leadership in state conventions, institutions and global organizations; he has initiated and led to accreditation a theological school,” he wrote. “He can relate across the board to the various sizes of churches and our institutional leadership. The different churches in which he has served have sought him for his visionary leadership.”

Everett “thrives on diversity,” Hugghins added. Everett “has experience with varieties of cultures and affinity groups through the language missions of the churches he has pastored, through the initiation of a theological school in multi-cultural Washington, D.C., and through his international work with the Baptist World Alliance,” he said.

Everett possesses “the conservative theological and spiritual convictions that resonate with Texas Baptists,” Hugghins noted.

At the same time, Everett’s convictions “are rooted in the Baptist principles that allow us to work together while respecting each other’s varied opinions on other issues,” Hugghins wrote. “His table is wide, but it rests on solid theological convictions. He recognizes that such wideness and freedom must work in both directions along the breadth of Texas Baptists.”

Other endorsements

The board also received endorsements from other search committee members, as well as selected individuals both inside and outside Texas.

Michael Bell, a past president of the BGCT and search committee member, said Everett possesses “energy, enthusiasm, breadth of experience and promise critical to helping Texas Baptists transition to the next level of cooperative partnerships.”

Statements of endorsement also came from members of churches where he served, ranging from author Chuck Colson to retired seminary professors Leon McBeth and Roy Fish.

Colson described Everett as “a man not only of spiritual depth but of great character.”

Fish characterized him as “superlative in his Christian walk and as a minister of the gospel.” McBeth fondly recalled his sermons as “solid, biblical—and fairly short.”

Previous service

Everett, 58, is pastor of First Baptist Church in Newport News, Va.

He served as founding president of the John Leland Center for Theological Studies in Arlington, Va. Under his leadership, the center received accreditation from the Association of Theological Schools. The last half of his tenure at the Leland Center overlapped the beginning of his four-year pastorate in Newport News.

Everett served five years at Columbia Baptist Church in Falls Church, Va., a 3,000-member congregation in suburban Washington, D.C.

Other pastorates were First Baptist Church in Pensacola, Fla.; University Baptist Church in Fort Worth; First Baptist Church in Benton, Ark.; Inglewood Baptist Church in Grand Prairie; and First Baptist Church in Gonzales.

Everett earned his doctorate and master’s degrees from Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary and his bachelor’s degree from Ouachita Baptist University.

He and his wife, the former Sheila King, have been married 35 years. They have two children—Jeremy, 32, who works as a community ministries director with Baptist Child & Family Services in San Antonio; and Rachel Froom, 28, of Ramrod Key, Fla. They have two grandsons.