By Jennifer Rash
The Baptist Paper
More than 200 Woman’s Missionary Union state executive directors and presidents, along with other state WMU representatives and the national WMU staff, are wrapping up their three-day (Jan. 6–8) January Board Meeting in Birmingham today.
Along with announcing the official goals of this year’s Annie Armstrong Easter Offering and Lottie Moon Christmas Offering, WMU leaders also heard a variety of reports from the missions field, learned about new WMU-related resources and handled other business items. Connie Dixon of New Mexico is the current national WMU president.
SBC EC search team update anticipated
Also, today (Jan. 8) is the six-week mark since the previous report from the Southern Baptist Convention Executive Committee presidential search team led by EC member Neal Hughes, director of missions for Montgomery (Ala.) Baptist Association. The team has been releasing an update every six weeks since appointed in June. The members also have met for about two hours every Thursday via Zoom and also met in person at the September EC meeting in Nashville.
The previous report was released Nov. 27 and noted the team at that point was working through the newly required extensive process of background checks, talking with numerous references and reviewing psychological evaluations.
Of the four phases Hughes outlined — the invitation phase, the interview phase, the investigation phase and the introduction phase — the team was in the investigation phase when the November report was released, so today’s report is anticipated to be about the introduction phase but likely not with a name attached.
Rumors from unofficial sources have been mentioning a specific name for several weeks now, but nothing official has been released. Today’s report from the search team should help Southern Baptists know more about the next steps.
Hughes said in November that the search team is “united and prayerful as we press forward with the hopeful goal of presenting a candidate in February” to the full EC board of trustees.
