Everett hopes to unify BGCT around ‘mission passion’

Posted: 1/28/08

Everett hopes to unify BGCT
around ‘mission passion’

By Ken Camp

Managing Editor

Missions, Christian education and advocacy are three primary “kingdom tasks” the nominee for executive director of the Baptist General Convention of Texas believes can unite Texas Baptists.

Randel Everett, pastor of First Baptist Church in Newport News, Va., hopes to unify the BGCT around “not just a mission statement, but a mission passion.”

Everett, 58, will be nominated for executive director at the Feb. 25-26 meeting of the BGCT Executive Board in Dallas. Charles Wade, who served eight years as executive director, retired Jan. 31. Jan Daehnert is serving as interim executive director.

If elected executive director, Everett will lead an organization still feeling the lingering effects of a financial scandal that involved church-starting funds in the Rio Grande Valley, and he will direct a staff that has experienced layoffs in recent months.

In a phone interview, Everett acknowledged he would be returning to Texas at “a challenging time,” but he also characterized it as “a time of great opportunity” for Texas Baptists. The increasing ethnic diversity of Texas and the need to engage young leaders age 35 and younger in denominational life rank among key challenges he noted.

“I would like to help the BGCT discern, ‘Where is our unique kingdom assignment?” he said.

Everett highlighted three tasks he believes could bring Texas Baptists together:

• Missions. “Texas Baptists should make sure every person in Texas has the opportunity to respond to the good news of Christ within his or her own language and context,” he said.

• Christian education. From religious education in local congregations to high education in universities and seminaries, Texas Baptists should “make sure we are providing the resources to ensure that people grow in Christ’s likeness,” he said.

• Advocacy. Texas Baptists should become advocates for the separation of church and state to ensure religious liberty for all people, and they should be advocates for the poor, he said. “There is no reason any child in Texas should go to bed hungry.”

Although he has served outside of Texas the last 15 years, Everett said he believes the experience has given him “a broader perspective of what is going on in Baptist life.”

Everett is the kind of leader Texas Baptists need, according to Ken Hugghins, chairman of the executive director search committee.

“As the committee listened to Texas Baptists and talked with excellent leaders and candidates across our state, a description of the kind of leader Texas needs emerged. Randel Everett matches that description and more,” said Hugghins, pastor of Elkins Lake Baptist Church in Huntsville.

“He will communicate across the spectrum of Texas Baptists, the generations of Texas Baptists, the many affinity groups of Texas Baptists and focus the kingdom commitment of Texas Baptist churches, institutions and convention servants.”

Everett served nine years as president of the John Leland Center for Theological Studies in Arlington, Va. While he was at the helm, the center received accreditation from the Association of Theological Schools.

His last three years 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.

He served from 1992 to 1996 at First Baptist Church in Pensacola, Fla., after a pastorate at University Baptist Church in Fort Worth.

Other pastorates were First Baptist Church in Benton, Ark.; Inglewood Baptist Church in Grand Prairie; and First Baptist Church in Gonzales. He also was assistant minister of missions at First Baptist Church in Dallas.

Everett was chairman of the Baptist World Alliance’s education and evangelism commission from 2000 to 2005 and has held other positions with the BWA.

He served on the BGCT Executive Board from 1978 to 1979. Other denominational leadership posts included president of the Arkansas Baptist State Convention Executive Board, moderator of Peninsula Baptist Association, trustee of Florida Baptist College, and a member of the national ministry partners study committee and the budget committee for the Baptist General Association of Virginia.

Everett has been a guest chaplain for the U.S. Senate and the House of Representatives, and he has been a teacher at the Pentagon Bible study.

Everett earned his doctorate and master’s degrees from Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary and his bachelor’s degree from Ouachita Baptist University. He also holds an honorary doctorate from the University of Richmond.

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.

Everett was born in Arkansas, but his family moved to Fort Worth when he was in the third grade so his father could attend seminary. His father, Kenneth, went on to serve as a Baptist pastor and director of missions.

Two of his three brothers—Tim of Central Baptist Church in Spring Hill, La., and Neil of First Baptist Church of Calhoun, La.—also became pastors. His other brother, Tommy, is a pharmacist in Hope, Ark., and their sister, Janie Schroeder, lives in McKinney.

With additional reporting by John Hall of BGCT Communications