Executive Board to vote on Tolliver as MBC’s leader

The Missouri Baptist Conven­tion Executive Board will be asked to elect David Tolliver as the organization’s next executive dir­ector when it meets in special session at 11 a.m. on Feb. 3 at the MBC headquarters in Jeffer­son City.

Tolliver has served as MBC interim executive director since April 2007, when the Executive Board fired his predecessor, David Clippard.

Executive Board members were reportedly informed of the search committee’s unan­i­mous choice by e-mail or mail last week. Chair James Freeman, layperson from Country Meadows Baptist Church, Independence, re­leased the committee recommendation to The Pathway, which posted it on its Web site on Jan. 21.

“In the midst of turmoil, Dr. Tolliver reaches out to others and puts his attention to the detail of the labor at hand and quietly performs more than his allotted labor so that foundations are rebuilt, the Word is preached and lives are touched by the power of the Holy Spirit,” Freeman told the newspaper.

The executive director search committee has worked since its appointment on July 10, 2007. The vice chair is John Marshall, MBC first vice president and pastor of Second Baptist Church, Spring­field.

Tolliver, 58, joined the MBC staff in 2005 as Cooperative Program specialist and associate executive director to Clippard. During the nearly 20 years prior to that he served as pastor of Calvary Baptist and Oak Hill Baptist churches, which merged, in St. Louis; Friendship Baptist Church in California; and Pisgah Baptist Church, Excelsior Springs.

Tolliver has served on the South­ern Baptist Executive Com­mit­tee (1992-2000); SBC Commit­tee on Nominations (1999); MBC president (2004); MBC recording secretary (2002); president of the Missouri Baptist Pastors Confer­ence (2000); the MBC Agency Res­t­oration Group (since 2002); Southwest Baptist University Board (2002-2007; and Midwest­ern Baptist Theological Seminary Board (2002-2008).

Tolliver holds a bachelor’s degree in business administration from Dallas Baptist University, and master of divinity and doctor of ministry degrees from Mid­west­ern Seminary.

The candidate refers to himself as a fourth-generation Mis­souri Baptist pastor. His father is Phillip Tolliver; his grandfather, Max Payne; and great-grandfather, R.L. Maness.

Tolliver and his wife, Myra, have been married for 36 years and have a daughter, Terra Jo; a son, Adam; and two grandchildren.