After 113 years, a Missouri Baptist organization serving senior adults will cease operations. Baptist Homes & Healthcare Ministries (formerly known as The Baptist Home) will sell five retirement home facilities, transfer two of its facilities to another Missouri Baptist ministry, and then close as an organization. The sudden demise of the nonprofit raises significant questions about decisions that led to the move, which Missouri Baptist leaders have not answered.
Messengers to the Missouri Baptist Convention’s annual meeting on Tuesday (Oct. 27) approved a proposal to transfer two retirement home facilities to the Missouri Baptist Children’s Home and allow Baptist Homes to sell the other five before ceasing operations. However, messengers were informed that if they did not approve the motion with a two-thirds majority, then Baptist Homes would still shut down and all seven campuses would be sold to pay off corporate debts.
“Missouri Baptists have a choice today. As simple as I can put this, you have a choice on whether or not you want to continue ministry to seniors or not,” MBC President Wesley Vance said as he urged votes for the proposal. “If you want to continue ministry to seniors, we have a pathway forward through a partnership where the Children’s Home will take these two campuses and expand their ministry assignment to include senior care. The other five will be actually liquated regardless of your actions.”
Under the proposal approved by messengers at the recommendation of the MBC’s Executive Board and the MBC-elected boards of Baptist Homes and the Missouri Baptist Children’s Home, the facilities in Ozark and Ashland will be transferred to MBCH. Meanwhile, Baptist Homes facilities in Adrian, Arcadia Valley, Shelbina, Smithville, and Vandalia will be sold. MBC leaders said there is a buyer lined up that runs similar facilities in other states, but they refused to say who.
The MBC announced this proposal a month ago to give 30 days’ notice before the annual meeting. They initially said it would take votes at two consecutive annual meetings. At the meeting this week, however, Vance said it this year would actually be the one and final vote since they decided the proposal did not actually require a change to the MBC constitution.
According to MBC leaders, behind-the-scenes conversations between leaders of the two agencies started in January. Those conversations were paused after a hunting accident during one of those meetings. On April 16, then-Baptist Homes President Rodney Harrison accidentally shot MBCH President Juston Gates during a turkey hunt in southwest Oklahoma. Gates passed away a week later from his injuries. He was 61. Initially, it was announced he had been shot by an unnamed hunting companion. But in early May, the Baptist Homes announced Harrison had been the one who shot Gates. Harrison was then put on personal leave until his previously planned retirement of Oct. 1.
Although messengers overwhelmingly approved the proposal, many who went to the microphone during the 40-minute debate and vote on the issue expressed disappointment and demanded more information about how the Baptist Homes got into this financial situation. MBC leaders did not answer the questions.
“This motion is actually a motion about moving forward, it’s not a motion retroactive,” Vance said as he sidestepped questions about how the Baptist Homes got to this point.
Under Harrison’s leadership at Baptist Homes over the past six years, the organization rapidly expanded to purchase multiple facilities. In fact, only one of the five facilities which will now be sold predates Harrison’s arrival in 2019. That facility is the one in Ironton (called the Arcadia Valley campus), which is where the ministry started in 1913.
The Baptist Homes Arcadia Valley campus in Ironton, Missouri.
One of the facilities, in Adrian, was initially announced as purchased for $15,001 plus bills due (in the $90,000 range), but after discovering “discrepancies,” it turned out to instead be about $42,000 plus bills due. Both that one and the ones in Smithville and Vandalia were otherwise closing or closed due to financial problems during the COVID-19 pandemic. Other facilities cost significantly more to obtain. Baptist Homes previously closed a facility in Chillicothe in 2024 and sold one in Independence in 2025 to a large, secular healthcare network based in California (just four years after purchasing it for $400,000).
Part of the expansion effort came in a bid to receive Medicare/Medicaid funds, which the Baptist Homes had not participated in prior to 2021. As the Baptist Homes purchased new facilities, they also raised rates at its historic campuses, sparking complaints from some longtime residents and resulting in some residents leaving.
This marks the second time in its history that Baptist Homes found itself closing because of a financial crisis. Originally started in 1913 as the Missouri Home for Aged Baptists in Ironton, like many businesses it found itself done in by the Great Depression. On April 19, 1935, the facility was sold on the courthouse steps. An Episcopalian layman bought it for $131 (today about $3,200), and then sold it back to Baptists for $1 to continue the ministry. This time, however, organization will be dissolved and that original facility in Ironton will be sold to another provider.
