Bob Reccord to accept NAMB post if elected
NORFOLK, Va. (BP)--Robert E. Reccord told the Norfolk, Va., congregation he leads April 20 he will accept the presidency of the Southern Baptist Convention's new North American Mission Board, if elected by the agency's trustees in their inaugural meeting June 19 in Dallas.
Reccord, 45, pastor of Norfolk's First Baptist Church, was joined in the Sunday evening service by Morris H. Chapman, president of the SBC Executive Committee, and Bill Hogue, a retired California Baptist executive who led the presidential search by a 13-member group of NAMB "incorporators."
"I know I must be obedient to what God is saying to me at this point," Reccord told the Norfolk congregation, according to The Virginian-Pilot daily newspaper April 21. "Tonight I would just ask you a big favor: Please love us enough to grant us a release to take that step, because we feel like it's a step we must take."
Reccord also noted to the church, "God does not build his churches on men or women. God builds his churches on Christ, and that's why they stand."
Chapman, in his comments, said Southern Baptists "are dead serious about saying we want to lead North America to Jesus Christ. We're talking tonight about shaping the history of America."
Chapman invited church members to join Reccord and his wife, Cheryl, at the altar for a time of prayer and, according to the newspaper, people swarmed from the pews.
Reccord's wife, in earlier comments to the church during the service, said she had known three years ago her husband might be called to the new position. Recounting a discussion they had of the SBC restructuring over lunch one day, she said, "At that table, on that day, it was as though God sat down and said, 'This is where you must be ready to go.' It startled me. Since that day, I've prayed, 'God, make me willing.'"
Reccord's predecessor, Ken Hemphill, also left the church to lead an SBC agency, Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary in Texas.
Reccord resigned in March as chairman of the task force guiding the SBC restructuring, acknowledging at that time he was the probable nominee for the NAMB presidency.
As chairman of the Implementation Task Force, Reccord led in assisting the SBC restructuring which reduces the number of SBC agencies from 19 to 12 and creates the new mission agency NAMB.
In a prepared statement at the time, Reccord said he was one of several men interviewed for president last year and that he had been asked to move forward in the nomination process.
Appointed as chairman of the 10-member ITF in September 1995, Reccord is a member of the SBC Executive Committee which established the ITF.
Ordained to the ministry in 1973 by Calvary Baptist Church, Evansville, Ind., Reccord's first full-time service was as minister of outreach and spiritual development at First Baptist Church, Wichita Falls, Texas. From there he went to the Home Mission Board's evangelism section as director of witness training.
Reccord later served as director of leadership training for Evangelism Explosion International. In the 1980s Reccord became a vice president of sales and marketing for a Michigan company to support his bivocational ministry. From there he went to Carmel Baptist Church, Charlotte, N.C., as co-pastor and then to Bell Shoals Baptist Church, Brandon, Fla., as senior pastor. He has been senior pastor at the Norfolk church since October 1992.
Born in Norfolk, Reccord's mother died when he was six months old. His father, who was in the Army and an alcoholic, put him up for adoption. He was adopted by a couple living in Evansville, Ind., where he grew up.
He earned master of divinity and doctor of ministry degrees from Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary, Fort Worth, Texas, in 1975 and 1979, respectively, and a bachelor of arts degree from Indiana University in 1972. Reccord has done post graduate work at Regent College, Oxford, England, on the history of revival and great awakenings.
Reccord and his wife have three children: Christy Joy, 20; Bryan Christopher, 17; and Ashley Nicole, 13.
The SBC's restructuring is to be completed at the annual meeting in June in Dallas. Following that meeting, the North American Mission Board begins operation with the election of a president, one of the first items for new trustees to decide. NAMB is a new entity resulting from the closure of three agencies: Home Mission Board, Atlanta; Radio and Television Commission, Fort Worth, Texas; and Brotherhood Commission, Memphis, Tenn. The new agency will have about 350 employees at its Alpharetta, Ga., office.
NAMB is a key facet of the SBC restructuring, highlighting the desire stated in the "Covenant for a New Century" passed by messengers to the 1995 SBC annual meeting in Atlanta to reach "the United States and Canada for Christ, using every appropriate means of evangelization and church planting." If approved in June, the NAMB budget for 1997-98 will be 22.79 percent of the SBC Cooperative Program budget, or more than $33 million. It will be second only in size in the SBC budget to the International Mission Board (formerly the Foreign Mission Board) with its 50 percent, more than $74 million, of the budget.
NAMB will have nearly 5,000 missionaries in cooperation with 41 state conventions/fellowships and 1,200 associations. A second source of funding for the new agency is the Annie Armstrong Easter Offering for home missions which, in 1996, totaled nearly $40 million.
