Baptist Briefs: Floyd to be nominated for SBC president

Floyd SBC presidential nominee. Arkansas pastor Ronnie Floyd will be nominated for president of the Southern Baptist Convention at the SBC annual meeting in June. Al Mohler, president of Southern Baptist Theological Seminary in Louisville, Ky., announced he plans to nominate Floyd. In 2009-2010, Floyd led the SBC Great Commission Resurgence Task Force. Floyd is a former chairman of the SBC Executive Committee and was a member of the SBC’s Program and Structure Task Force that resulted in denominational reorganization in the mid-1990s. Floyd’s nomination is the first announced for the June 10-11 annual meeting in Baltimore, Md. The new SBC president will succeed New Orleans pastor Fred Luter of Franklin Avenue Baptist Church, who became the first African American to lead the SBC when he was elected in 2012.

Baptist seminary in Liberia reopens. A labor judge’s Jan. 6 order shutting down the Liberia Baptist Theological Seminary has been lifted, the school’s interim president announced Feb. 21. National Labor Court Judge Comfort Natt ordered the closure over the seminary’s refusal to pay a $300,000 judgment to a former president who sued the school after his removal in 2007. Richard Wilson, a Mercer University professor on loan for a one-year appointment at the institution, said after negotiations with former President Lincoln Brownell’s legal team, the shutdown was lifted Feb. 14. Wilson, who arrived in Monrovia Jan. 4 with plans to begin work immediately, entered his office the first time Feb. 17. His installation as sixth president of a school attempting to rebuild after decades of civil war and recent controversy over leadership changes in Liberian Baptist life is scheduled March 13.

Updated qualifications considered for SBC messengers. The Southern Baptist Convention’s Executive Committee will consider a proposal June 9 to update the SBC constitution regarding qualifications for churches to send messengers to the annual meeting. Under the proposal, each cooperating church that contributed to SBC causes during the preceding fiscal year automatically would qualify for two messengers. Additional messengers would be recognized from a cooperating church by one of two options, whichever allows the greater number of messengers—one additional messenger for each full percent of the church’s undesignated receipts through any combination of gifts through the Cooperative Program, designated gifts through the Executive Committee for convention causes or to any SBC entity; or one additional messenger for each $6,000 the church contributes in the preceding year through the same combination of the Cooperative Program, designated gifts through the Executive Committee for convention causes or to any SBC entity.