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SBC DIGEST: Chinese Baptist leader Simon Tsoi dies; North Carolina search team holds first meeting

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Chinese Baptist leader Simon Tsoi dies

PHOENIX (BP) — Simon Tsoi, the second executive director of the Chinese Baptist Fellowship of the U.S. and Canada, died Friday (Aug. 7) in Phoenix after a brief illness. He was 85.

Pastor Tsoi, as he would fondly introduce himself to others, served the fellowship from 2000-2010. He was one of the pastors who initiated the Youth Summer Mission Project in 1992 that set many Chinese Baptist youths on a path to missions and ministry.

He was also actively involved with the ministry of the Transworld Chinese Baptist Mission Conference, the global mission engagement of Chinese Baptists around the world, and served as its chairperson from 2001-2004 and as an advisor since 2007.

He was a pastor at heart, serving as senior pastor of the First Chinese Baptist Church in Phoenix from 1979-2001, and was an avid soul winner who shared the Gospel with everyone who would listen. He served Southern Baptists as the convention’s first vice president in 1994, as a member of the Baptist Faith and Message Study Committee in 2000 and on the Great Commission Resurgence Task Force in 2009.

A private funeral service will be held Wednesday (Aug. 12) in Phoenix, and a memorial service will be planned for next year when the COVID-19 pandemic eases.

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North Carolina search team names officers, sets deadline
By Seth Brown
ASHEBORO, N.C. (BP) — The search committee tasked with finding the Baptist State Convention of North Carolina’s next executive director-treasurer held its first meeting Aug. 3 at Caraway Camp and Conference Center near Asheboro, N.C. Current executive director-treasurer Milton A. Hollifield Jr. announced May 19 [3] he will retire early next year.
The group named Allan Blume as vice chairman, Pam Young as recording secretary and Teresa Jones as an alternate recording secretary to fill in if needed.
Blume is the interim pastor at Pittsboro Baptist Church and a former editor at the Biblical Recorder. Young is a former convention staff member, and Jones is a former convention ministry assistant who currently serves as a part-time ministry coordinator with Baptists on Mission, an auxiliary of the convention.
Search committee chairman Noah Crowe, interim pastor at Peachtree Memorial Baptist Church in Murphy, N.C., said the group used the initial meeting to become acquainted and pray for one another.
“I want to make sure we all know each other and trust each other,” Crowe told the Recorder in a phone interview. He called the search committee a “team” and expressed a desire to be “unified in where the Holy Spirit is leading us in this process.”
Read the full story here.  [4]


Seth Brown is editor of the Biblical Recorder.