A Mississippi pastor has announced plans to nominate a fellow Mississippi pastor who is a sexual abuse survivor to serve in the role of Southern Baptist Convention (SBC) first vice president. Adam Wyatt announced his intentions to nominate Brad Eubank, senior pastor of Petal First Baptist Church in Petal, Miss., to serve in the role.
“Brad’s conservative commitment to our convention and his passionate spirit of cooperation are exactly what our convention needs,” said Wyatt, pastor of Corinth Baptist Church in Magee.
Eubank, 50, has served at Petal First Baptist since 2012. He has 32 years of pastoral experience serving churches in Alabama, Louisiana and Texas, according to a press release.
Since 2012, Petal First Baptist has increased its Cooperative Program (CP) giving from $8,593 to $72,581, according to the 2021 Annual Church Profile (ACP). In 2021, the church gave 9.8% of its undesignated gifts and offerings to CP, according to ACP data.
The church has averaged 21 baptisms per year since 2012, reporting 18 in 2021.
“As Southern Baptists seek to address the horrifying realities outlined in the Task Force report, we must have leaders who are both biblically faithful and sensitive to pleas from the survivor community for much-needed reforms,” Wyatt said in the release.
According to the recent Guidepost Solutions report on the alleged mishandling of sexual abuse claims, Eubank was sexually abused as a child by a minister of music at a Southern Baptist church in Mississippi.
John Langworthy was sentenced to a 50-year suspended sentence for sex crimes. According to a Sept. 16, 2011, story in The Christian Post, Langworthy confessed to members of Morrison Heights Baptist in Clinton, Miss., that he had committed “sexual indiscretions with teenage boys in Texas and Mississippi.”
“Rather than asking survivors to stay quiet, we should be encouraging them to speak out,” Wyatt said in a statement. “Rather than keeping their reports of abuse in a secret file in Nashville, we should be inviting survivors to help us fix a broken system.”
Eubank is a graduate of Baylor University and Beeson Divinity School at Samford University.
The only other announced candidate for first vice president is Victor Chayasirisobhon, pastor of First Southern Baptist Church in Anaheim, Calif.
The 2022 SBC annual meeting is set for June 14-15 at the Anaheim Convention Center.
(EDITOR’S NOTE – Brandon Porter serves as associate vice president for convention news at the SBC Executive Committee.)
