JEFFERSON CITY, Mo. (BP)—David Tolliver has been elected as executive director of the Missouri Baptist Convention after nearly 22 months as interim executive director.
The MBC executive board voted to call Tolliver 44-4 in a special called meeting Feb. 3 in Jefferson City. Tolliver, 58, said he would accept the position.
The executive board action culminated a 19-month nationwide search by an 11-member search committee. During that time Tolliver, a fourth-generation Missouri Baptist pastor, was at work in the Baptist Building in what turned out to be an extended job interview. Various national candidates in addition to Tolliver were considered along the way, but he was the only one recommended to succeed the former executive director who was terminated in April 2007 on a 44-7 vote by the board.
Tolliver becomes the 12th 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 Missouri Baptist Convention in 1958.
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Reported by the staff of The Pathway, newsjournal of the Missouri Baptist Convention.
