Thursday, March 22, 2007

Dr. Geoff Hammond new president of NAMB



I'm very pleased to share that yesterday our board of trustees elected Dr. Geoff Hammond as the new president of the North American Mission Board of the Southern Baptist Convention.

Dr. Hammond grew up in Africa, the son of Southern Baptist missionaries, and was educated at Spurgeon's College in London. He came to the United States where he met his wife, Debbie. He has served as an IMB missionary in Brazil, and associational missionary in Arkansas, and a church planter and NAMB missionary in Virginia. For the past five years he has been the associate state executive for Southern Baptist Conservatives of Virginia.

I'm excited that we are getting a missionary to lead our mission agency for North America. I'm also excited that we are getting a man who is humble, brilliant, and a good listener. He understands that North America is a true mission field, and that we need to have a passion to reach the vast array of cultures who have come to North America. He speaks Portuguese, some Spanish, and he can converse in both American and British English! Pray for him as he moves his wife Debbie, and son Nicholas to Georgia. They have a son, Timothy, whom they will leave behind in college in Virginia.

The search committee did an excellent job. They left no stone unturned in the process. Dr. Hammond was given psychological tests, management tests, and submitted to all kinds of background checks. The search committee resisted political pressure to select somebody else's favorite. In fact, they told us that they received phone calls and letters for candidates, but they ignored the outside political pressure. Nobody on the committee had any personal connection to Dr. Hammond, although one member had met him when he was a missionary and had his picture on his refrigerator for years to pray for his missionary work. The trustees had a roll-call vote, yet the vote was an enthusiastically unanimous vote to call Dr. Hammond as our new president.

You can read an article about the election in The Christian Index here, which includes a quote from me.

You can read an interview with Dr. Hammond here.

You can see photos of the meeting here.

To see a video introducing Dr. Hammond (and hear his soft British accent), click here.

3 comments:

Anonymous said...

Is it true that NAMB's DVD titled IN THE NAME OF JEHOVAH features a closet homosexual as one of the Southern Baptist Church’s main witnesses against the teachings of the WATCHTOWER?

Dr. Bob Rogers said...

You are referring to the moderator of the DVD, not a "main witness." I consulted NAMB about this, and they informed me that about a year ago there was a single allegation made against this man that he was a closet homosexual, but no evidence was provided to back up the accusation.
So no evidence exists that the accusation is true, and if it were true, it was not known at the time that NAMB hired the man to moderate the video, and what's more, if it were true, it would not change the truthfulness of the message of the DVD.
The apostle Paul said that some people preached the gospel out of false motives, yet he said that any fault with the messenger did not change the truthfulness of the message:
"What does it matter? Just that in every way, whether out of false motives or true, Christ is proclaimed." (Philippians 1:18, HCSB.)

Anonymous said...

Interesting to know.