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Board picks Blume to lead Recorder
Dianna L. Cagle, BR Assistant Managing Editor
April 24, 2011
6 MIN READ TIME

Board picks Blume to lead Recorder

Board picks Blume to lead Recorder
Dianna L. Cagle, BR Assistant Managing Editor
April 24, 2011

After several months of searching the Biblical Recorder named its new editor/president officially today.

The BR Board voted April 18 to call K. Allan Blume, pastor of Mount Vernon Baptist Church in Boone, as its new editor.

The pastor announced the decision to his church today during the church’s two morning services.

Blume has been Mount Vernon Baptist’s pastor for more than 16 years. His last day to preach will be May 15. A Gideons speaker will preach May 22, Blume’s last Sunday at the church.

Blume will start at the Biblical Recorder May 25.

A search committee met March 25-26 interviewing three candidates for the position of editor/president. They brought him before the Board’s spring meeting for a vote, which was unanimous.

Born in Charlotte, Blume has undergraduate degrees from Wingate College and Carson-Newman College in Jefferson City, Tenn. He has a master of divinity degree from Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary in Fort Worth, Texas. He has been on staff at churches in Texas, Oklahoma and North Carolina: pastor of Statesville Avenue Baptist Church, Charlotte (12 years); and executive pastor of Hickory Grove Baptist Church, Charlotte (five years).

He has held leadership positions within the Southern Baptist Convention (SBC) and the Baptist State Convention of North Carolina (BSC). He ended a three-year term as president of the BSC Board of Directors in 2009. He was president of the North Carolina Baptist Pastor’s Conference in 1997.

Contributed photo

Allan Blume (see video message)

Blume also held positions within his local Baptist associations. He is serving as the chairman of the Vision Fulfillment Committee for the BSC. That committee continues to tour the state listening to North Carolina Baptists and their ideas for the Baptist State Convention of North Carolina.

Because of Blume’s new position he has had to resign from two SBC committees. He had recently been named to the SBC’s Resolutions Committee for the upcoming annual meeting June 14-15 in Phoenix. He currently serves on the SBC Executive Committee, and will resign from that post due to SBC by-law requirements.

He shared three overarching goals with the Board — be biblical; keep the focus on the Great Commission; and glorify God.

1) Be biblical. Blume stressed that he stands “unapologetically” on the Word of God. His goal is for the Biblical Recorder to live up to its name and be biblical in theology, in practice (strategy and procedure), and in conduct (integrity and civility).

2) Keep the focus on the Great Commission.

“Baptists are people who love missions,” Blume said. “We want to be part of that. We’re called to be missionaries.”

As pastor of Mount Vernon, Blume said he led his church into the mindset of being a missionary training center. He encouraged his church members to be on mission wherever they are. In the last 12 years Blume said there have been 20 family units from his church that have become vocational missionaries.

3) Glorify God.

“I believe God is glorified when we tell His stories,” Blume said. Using the acronym DIGG, Blume asks Does It Glorify God?

Blume said he pictures the Recorder as the “central convergence,” a place where the voices of Baptists come together. Blume says others tell him he has leadership as well as administration abilities that will serve him well at the Biblical Recorder.

His years as a pastor as well as a leader on the local, state and national level, will help him guide the Recorder to make history.

“We’re not going to rewrite history,” Blume said in an interview April 18. “We have work to do.”

Blume said he doesn’t want to get caught “in the world of the negative,” but instead wants to move ahead. He often looks back to his life verse, Luke 1:37, for inspiration: “For with God, nothing shall be impossible.”

He and his wife Pam have one adult son, Jeremy, who lives in Atlanta, Ga.

Searching

The search committee — Gerald Hodges, chairman of the Board of Directors and pastor of Westwood Baptist Church, Roxboro; Jo Andrews, member of Lawndale Baptist Church, Greensboro; Robert Hefner, staff member at Mud Creek Baptist Church, Hendersonville; Richard Hicks, interim pastor of East Lumberton Baptist Church; and Don Warren, member of Parkwood Baptist Church, Gastonia — was named in November 2010 at the Baptist State Convention annual meeting and began discussing the process in December.

Norman Jameson, the previous editor resigned effective Dec. 31, 2010. His resignation came at the October board meeting.

Hodges said the Board received 18 resumes from qualified candidates and many more inquiries. Hodges stressed that the search was covered in prayer as were the three candidates they met with in March.

“Each one of these individuals was highly qualified and any one of them would have been a great Editor,” Hodges said.

In an email, Hodges said Blume brings his “vast experience as a Senior Pastor and a deep love of the local church. He understands how important the creative use of technology will be to the future success of the Recorder. He knows and loves North Carolina Baptists and has an exciting vision for the Recorder.

“During Allan and Pam’s time with us at our Board’s spring meeting I think it was clear to all of us that God had long been at work in many ways preparing them for this task.”

Hodges said the Board received glowing recommendations for Blume from several Baptist leaders: Michael C. Blackwell, president of Baptist Children’s Homes of North Carolina; Ed Yount, senior pastor of Woodlawn Baptist Church, Conover, and president of the BSC; Danny Akin, president of Southeastern Baptist Theological Seminary in Wake Forest; Greg Mathis, senior pastor of Mud Creek Baptist Church, Hendersonville; Al Gilbert, senior pastor of Calvary Baptist Church, Winston-Salem; and Milton A. Hollifield Jr., BSC executive director-treasurer.

“I know him to be a strong leader, a compassionate pastor, and a man who is dedicated to Kingdom causes,” said Blackwell.

“During the three years that he was president of the Board of Directors, I, along with many others, saw Allan as fair, steady-at-the-helm, and dedicated to advancing the cause of Christ in North Carolina.”

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(SPECIAL NOTE — Thank you for your continued support of the Biblical Recorder site. During this interim period while we are searching for a new Editor/President the comments section will be temporarily discontinued. Thank you for your understanding and patience in this. If you do have comments or issues with items we run, please contact [email protected] or call 919-847-2127.)