Long walk of obedience to God characterizes Meadors’ missionary service

RICHMOND, Va.—Clyde and Elaine Meador, who retired May 13 from the Southern Baptist International Mission Board, are known among missionary teams for steady, unflappable leadership. Yet 41 years of service testify to the Meadors’ simple steps of obedience even more than to their strategic insights and leadership.

“When you look at Clyde’s and Elaine’s lives, it’s step-by-step obedience in the same direction towards the Father’s will for their lives,” said John Brady, IMB vice president for global engagement.

Clyde Meador Clyde Meador worked closely with three IMB presidents as a top adviser and vice president, and even as the mission organization’s interim president from August 2010 to March 2011.

“When I first stepped into my role as president of the IMB, the first thing I did was ask Clyde to continue in leadership, for I could not imagine taking this responsibility without his leadership alongside me,” IMB President David Platt said.

Like others at the mission board, Platt valued Meador’s even nature and wisdom.

“His steadiness has been an anchor for the IMB during the ups and downs, trials and challenges that the IMB has experienced over the previous four decades,” Platt said.

The Meadors began their careers with the mission board in 1974, when they were appointed as missionaries to Indonesia. For the next 14 years, the couple served in a range of roles. He started as a church planter in Medan, then trained pastors and lay leaders in Semarang and later Purwokerto. In 1987, he became the mission administrator in Jakarta.

In 1989, he took on leadership of the Southern Asia and Pacific Itinerant Mission. Former IMB President Jerry Rankin served as the Meadors’ area director at the time and noted that Meador “had sound theology and was a strategic thinker. You saw this in how he led the itinerant missionary teams.”

The itinerant approach was a creative innovation in a rapidly changing world, Rankin said. More than a decade before mission strategists had introduced concepts like Creative Access, the Meadors led roving teams of missionaries who moved in and out of South Asian countries on training circuits for local pastors and lay leaders.

They moved from leading the itinerant teams in the early ’90s to leading missionary teams across the South Asia, Pacific and Oceania regions, as he became associate director and then an area director.

His deep relationship with Christ was the foundation for his long tenure of leadership, Platt observed.

“His personal relationship with Christ is the spring from which everything in his life and leadership flows,” Platt said. “He loves God, fears God and lives to glorify God.”

Tom Elliff, who led the IMB as president from 2011 to 2014, noted an easy, trusting way about the Meadors.

“It is the authentic nature of Clyde’s and Elaine’s hearts that stands out most clearly to me,” Elliff said. “You can trust they will do what they say they will do. If they say that they are going to pray for you, they will. When they say that you are their friend, you are their friend. They remember their commitments. They don’t take these things lightly.”

Rankin, who worked with the Meadors much of their mission careers, said the couple’s success as leaders also resided in their willingness to follow.

“You cannot be an effective leader without being an effective follower,” noted Rankin, whose presidency began in 1993 and ended with retirement in 2010. “Clyde is a leader, but he is also happy to work in that servant role. He is able to enjoy fulfillment and joy in knowing that he is contributing to making things happen. He didn’t seek the credit. He doesn’t need that.”

In 1998, Rankin asked Clyde Meador to take on leadership of a massive new area that included all IMB missionary teams working in Central and Southern Asia, following Rankin’s decision in 1997 to rework the IMB’s structure and focus, an initiative called New Directions.

“New Directions launched a redeployment of our mission force to focus on engagement, to change our ethos to one of church planting, and to understand people groups,” Rankin said. “Clyde’s fingerprints are all over that.”

In 2001, Rankin asked the Meadors to move to Richmond and join the office of the president as part of Rankin’s leadership team.

“I had a vision for where I knew we needed to go,” Rankin said. “But it was people like Clyde and Elaine, with their humble leadership, that helped make it happen.”

Elliff agreed. “Clyde is one of the most humble people you will ever be around,” he said. “He is not ignorant of what his talents are—nor is anyone else who works with him. But he never seeks to use those to lord it over anybody.

“Clyde was so good in working with me, with Jerry (Rankin) and, of late, with David (Platt). He would humbly come along behind and say: ‘You have the plan. Let’s talk about how I can help implement that plan.’ Not everybody is willing to do that, but Clyde could always see the big picture, because, for him, it’s about the kingdom.”

This clear view of the kingdom of God often drew the Meadors to prayer, explained an IMB global strategist for South Asian peoples who worked closely with the couple throughout their careers.

“It’s always been comforting to count on Elaine’s prayers through the years—whether for ministry or personal family requests,” he said. “As we served in leadership both in Southeast Asia and South Asia, Clyde and Elaine’s understanding of both of those areas has encouraged and helped us.”

“The IMB possesses a rich 170-year history of men and women who have faithfully served the Lord and his purposes in their day,” Platt said. “Clyde Meador is a bright star in that history, and as he retires now, I fully realize I am standing on the shoulders of a giant whom I am most grateful to know, love and have served alongside.”