[1]RICHMOND, Va. (BP)–Ronald “Ron” Boswell, pastor of Richmond’s Grove Avenue Baptist Church and a former leader in involving Southern Baptists volunteers in international missions, is retiring after seven years at the Virginia church.
Boswell, who turns 65 on Jan. 20, made the announcement Jan. 16 to the 1,800-member church.
For 12 years, Boswell was director of the volunteers in missions department of the former Foreign Mission Board, now International Mission Board, of the Southern Baptist Convention. In that capacity, he headed up efforts to expedite the flow of thousands of volunteers overseas each year to assist career missionaries and Baptist conventions.
Previously, he and his wife, Marlene, had served 17 years as IMB missionaries to Brazil.
Boswell told the Richmond Times-Dispatch newspaper that his retirement from Grove Avenue, where he became pastor in 1993, is effective immediately and that he and his wife felt a “new voice and a new vision for the millennium might be a blessing for the church.”
Boswell also told the newspaper he has no immediate plans but said he is considering serving at churches as an interim pastor, conducting seminars and leading revivals as well as the possibility of heading a mission in New Mexico.
Grove Avenue Baptist Church is among the leading congregations in the Southern Baptist Conservatives of Virginia state convention.
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