Baptist Briefs: Missionaries to Burmese

American Baptists appoint Burmese missionaries. Two hundred years after missionary Adoniram Judson’s 1813 mission to Burma, American Baptist Home Mission Societies appointed two missionaries to serve refugees from the Southeast Asian country also known as Myanmar. The appointments of pastors Saw Ler Htoo of Laurel, Md., and Ronald Charles Nunuk of Milwaukee mark the first time Burmese pastoral leaders will serve as staff at the national level. The duo will be commissioned at this year’s biennial meeting of American Baptist Churches USA, scheduled June 21-23 in Overland Park, Kan. Htoo has been pastor of Calvary Burmese Church in Washington, D.C., since 2001 and executive secretary of Karen Baptist Churches USA since 2009. He also serves on the Burma Refugees Task Force. Nunuk is founding senior pastor at Carson Chin Baptist Church in Milwaukee and trustee and youth coordinator of Chin Baptist Churches of USA. He has served as a board member of American Baptist Churches of Wisconsin.

CBF, American Baptist leaders meet. Staff leaders of the Cooperative Baptist Fellowship and American Baptist Churches USA recently met in Atlanta to share ideas and discuss present and future partnerships. In 2007, CBF and ABCUSA met together in Washington, D.C., for the CBF’s annual general assembly and American Baptist biennial meeting. At that gathering, the two organizations jointly commissioned four field personnel to missions service—Nancy and Steve James serving in Haiti and Duane and Marcia Binkley serving among Karen refugees. The two groups also have partnered in disaster-response efforts including the earthquake in Haiti, Hurricane Katrina and recently Hurricane Sandy. They share partners in ministry, such as the Baptist World Alliance, Baptist Joint Committee for Religious Affairs, Baptist Center for Ethics and Baptists Today.

Moderate leader Tondera dies. Steve Tondera, 79, of Huntsville, Ala., a layman active in moderate Baptist causes, died Feb. 13. A former NASA administrator and progressive cattleman, he was active in Huntsville’s First Baptist Church. Twice elected president of the Alabama Baptist State Convention, Tondera was among leadership of a group originally called Baptists Committed to the Southern Baptist Convention along with pastors Winfred Moore, Richard Jackson, Daniel Vestal, James Slatton and fellow laymen John Baugh and George McCotter. Tondera ran unsuccessfully for second vice president of the Southern Baptist Convention in 1990 on a moderate slate led by Vestal, at the time pastor of Dunwoody Baptist Church in Atlanta. When the Cooperative Baptist Fellowship formed, Tondera was selected to serve on the first CBF Coordinating Council.