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NAMB taps Frank Page as evangelization VP


DENVER (BP)–Trustees of the North American Mission Board voted Wednesday to approve Frank Page as vice president of NAMB’s evangelization group.

The vote came during NAMB’s regularly scheduled trustee meeting. Page will begin serving toward the end of October.

“Frank’s coming to NAMB is one of the most significant happenings in recent years,” said Richard Harris, NAMB’s acting interim president. “He brings expertise, experience; he brings visionary leadership; and he brings relationships that few have throughout this convention. There are few leaders in this convention that have as much vision and passion to see the Great Commission fulfilled in North America, and ultimately the world, as Frank Page.”

Page served as Southern Baptist Convention president from 2006-08. He has been pastor of First Baptist Church Taylors, S.C., near Greenville since 2001.

“The only hope for our continent is Christ,” Page said. “Serving as I do on President Obama’s advisory council and having served as SBC president, I am well aware of the anarchy in our nation and our only hope is Jesus, and that’s why I am here. For the rest of my life I want to do what I can to touch lostness on this continent.”

After the vote by NAMB’s trustees Oct. 7, Page pledged to those who had just approved his role: “I will work with all my might and work with all my heart.”

It was during his tenure as SBC president that Page called upon NAMB to lead the convention in a new evangelism initiative that would involve all Southern Baptists in an effort to sweep the continent with the Gospel. That initiative became GPS: God’s Plan for Sharing, which launches in the United States and Canada in the spring of 2010.

Page will now lead in NAMB’s effort to accomplish that task.

“It’s almost a surreal feeling to me, because God brought that to my heart right after being elected as SBC president. I felt God just kept saying, ‘We have got to get a nationwide evangelistic emphasis going.’ So I kept pushing for that and pushing for that. I knew that our churches were hungry for somebody to step forward and say, ‘Here’s where we’re headed.'”

Page has made evangelism and missions a hallmark at First Baptist Taylors. The church ranks in the top 95th percentile of SBC churches for number of baptisms, with 144 reported in 2008. First Taylors is a leading giver among South Carolina Baptist churches in gifts through the Cooperative Program as well as national and state missions offerings. In addition, First Baptist Taylors plants a new church a year.

Page holds a Ph.D. in Christian ethics focusing on moral, social and ethical issues from Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary in Fort Worth, Texas, along with a master of divinity degree from Southwestern. He earned a bachelor of science degree with honors from Gardner-Webb University in North Carolina, majoring in psychology with minors in sociology and Greek.

NAMB trustee chairman Tim Patterson, pastor of Hillcrest Baptist Church in Jacksonville, Fla., said Page “will be one of the leaders at NAMB who will help propel us into the next two or three decades keeping NAMB at the point in reaching and impacting lostness in North America.”

Patterson expressed a bright future for the entity.

“With leaders like Frank at the helm of evangelism and Richard Harris as interim president, and so many others in leadership, as God is bringing this wonderful team together, I see those men taking NAMB to even greater heights than it ever has been and it will be used through not only this decade but the next decade and the decade after that.”
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Mike Ebert is communications team leader for the North American Mission Board.

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  • Mike Ebert