After 22 Months It's FINALLY Official! Dr. David Tolliver Named Executive Director of the Missouri Baptist Convention

From the time-warped MBC Pathway (timestamped as Last Published: February 3, 2009 3:25 PM)

Missouri Baptists get new executive director

JEFFERSON CITY, Mo. (BP)—The man who held the interim title for nearly 22 months, David Tolliver, is the new executive director of the Missouri Baptist Convention (MBC).

The MBC Executive Board in a special called meeting Feb. 3 voted to call Tolliver 44-4, and Tolliver said he would accept in a Gold Room filled with board members, state convention staff, and visitors. Tolliver, 58, has been serving since May 2005 as an MBC associate executive director.

The executive board action was the culmination of a nationwide search by the 11-member search committee that took nearly 19 months. During that time Tolliver, a fourth-generation Missouri Baptist pastor, was hard at work in the Baptist Building in what turned out to be an extended job interview. Various national candidates besides Tolliver were considered along the way, but he was the only one recommended and ultimately called to succeed David Clippard, who was terminated April 10, 2007, on a 44-7 vote by the board.

Tolliver becomes the 12th man to hold the position of executive director/general superintendent/executive secretary since the 175-year-old convention created that office in 1917. Seven of those leaders served in the Missouri Baptist General Association, which was renamed the MBC in December 1958.

Read article (here).

Lots more to be said later today ...