Baptist Briefs: Serbian Baptists appeal for help after floods

View of the Sava and Danube confluence in Belgrade, seen during Sava flood from Kalemegdan Fortress, Belgrade. (Wikipedia Commons Image)

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Baptists in Serbia are appealing for assistance for victims of deadly floods that inundated large parts of southeast Europe. Heavy rainfall between May 14 and 17 caused heavy flooding and landslides, killing at least 62 people in several countries with hundreds of thousands left homeless. Serbia and Bosnia and Herzegovina suffered the greatest damage, although Croatia, Romania and Slovakia also were affected. Ondrej Franka and Dane Vidovic, president and general secretary, respectively, of the Union of Baptist Churches in Serbia, wrote to the Baptist World Alliance. The Serbian Baptist leaders appealed for financial assistance and for food, water, hygienic packs, diapers, blankets, beds and linens.

Truett grad nominated for CBF moderator-elect. The Cooperative Baptist Fellowship nominated Matt Cook, pastor of First Baptist Church in Wilmington, N.C., as moderator-elect. As a graduate of Baylor University’s Truett Theological Seminary, Cook would become the first moderator to have graduated from a CBF partner school. matt cook250Matt CookThe committee also presented four names to serve on the CBF governing board, 17 to serve on the ministries council and 11 to serve on the missions council, including Amy Wilkins, missions minister at Valley Ranch Baptist Church in Coppell. The nominating committee’s recommendations will be presented for approval at the CBF general assembly in Atlanta, Ga., June 27. Kasey Jones, pastor of National Baptist Memorial Church in Washington, D.C., will assume the role of moderator at the conclusion of the general assembly. CBF Moderator Bill McConnell, a businessman and lay leader from Knoxville, Tenn., will serve as an ex-officio member of the nominating committee as past moderator.

Windermere lawsuit comes to an end. The Missouri Supreme Court declined to review a lower court ruling ending a 12-year legal battle over ownership of a Baptist camp that declared independence from the Missouri Baptist Convention in 2001. The refusal leaves standing a decision by the Missouri Court of Appeals denying a jury trial to determine legal ownership of Windermere Baptist Conference Center due to an inadequate brief filed by the Southern Baptist Convention affiliate’s executive board. A three-judge panel of the appellate court’s Southern District said procedural errors in the convention’s appeal made it impossible for the court to properly review a legal file exceeding 4,200 pages, divided into 34 separate non-word searchable PDF files. Missouri Baptists filed lawsuits in 2002 against five former convention agencies that amended founding documents to no longer grant the convention the privilege of nominating and electing trustees, moving to self-perpetuating trustee boards. The convention later dropped a lawsuit against the Missouri Baptist newspaper Word & Way. Earlier this year, attempts to mediate the four remaining disputes broke down, sending the cases back to trial.


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