SBC Leaders Laud Adrian Rogers' Life, Ministry, and Leadership Legacy
by Allie Martin
November 17, 2005
(AgapePress) - - A former Texas judge who helped rescue the Southern Baptist Convention (SBC) from an extreme liberal path is now joining thousands of Southern Baptists in Memphis for the funeral of Dr. Adrian Rogers.Rogers, founder of Love Worth Finding Ministries and Pastor Emeritus of Bellevue Baptist Church, passed away early Tuesday due to complications from pneumonia and cancer. Funeral services will be held this evening at Bellevue Baptist Church in Memphis, where the minister and SBC leader served for 32 years as pastor before retiring in March of this year.
In 1979, Paul Pressler was an appeals court judge in Texas and a lay leader in the SBC. That year, he led an effort to encourage Dr. Rogers to run for president of the denomination, a position he held three times in the years to come. Rogers was first elected to the post at the Southern Baptists' 1979 Houston convention -- a vote that, according to Pressler, was a turning point for the SBC.
"That vote was the beginning of the conservative movement," the retired judge notes. "It showed that conservatives were dominant in the Southern Baptist Convention, that we had concerns about our schools and the doctrine being taught, and it was the beginning wedge to remove our convention from a liberal drift."
Rogers' leadership put the SBC back on track, Pressler asserts. As a result, he says, "We are the only major denomination, except for Missouri Synod Lutheran, that have returned from the brink of destruction through their liberal seminaries."
Rogers was known as the driving force behind the move to pull the SBC back from the brink of liberalism in the late 1970s. As a lay leader in the conservative resurgence, Pressler observed the influence the denomination president and pastor wielded but says Rogers was more interested in pleasing God than having power and prestige.
"He was God's man," the retired Texas judge says, "and his great preaching, his great love of people, his great love of the Lord, his great love of the gospel was so evident in his personality that people were attracted to him -- and God used him in a most remarkable way." Pressler says if it had not been for Adrian Rogers, the conservative movement in the SBC "would not have succeeded," and the church would not be known, as it is today, for its bold stand on God's Word.
Dr. Richard Land, president of the Ethics & Religious Liberty Commission (ERLC) of the Southern Baptist Convention, agrees that the impact from Rogers' ministry will be felt for years to come. He calls Rogers a giant in church history and "one of the greatest preachers of any century, including the one in which he lived."
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Dr. Richard Land |
The Love Worth Finding Ministries founder was "a figure that is almost beyond the ability to describe," Land says, thanks to "the impact that he had on Southern Baptists and other Christians in our nation and around the world through his worldwide radio and television ministry."But although Rogers will be missed, Land says the SBC and the extended Christian community can rejoice that this "prince of preachers" has now gone home to hear "'Well done, thou good and faithful servant' from the Prince of Peace," and that "he now is in heaven with Jesus forever."
Allie Martin, a regular contributor to AgapePress, is a reporter for American Family Radio News, which can be heard online.
