Georgia’s Connell to be SBC 1st VP nominee

NASHVILLE — John Connell, senior pastor of Calvary Baptist Church in Savannah, Ga., will be nominated for first vice president of the Southern Baptist Convention (SBC), a Texas pastor announced.

Bruce Barber, pastor of First Baptist Church, Roanoke, Texas, said April 29 he will nominate Connell for the post during the SBC’s June 10–11 meeting in Indianapolis.

Connell has served as senior pastor at Calvary since 2003. He previously served churches in Muscle Shoals, Louisiana and Georgia. He holds both master’s and doctoral degrees from New Orleans Baptist Theological Seminary, where the faculty selected him as the outstanding master of divinity student in 1982.

Information from the 2007 Annual Church Profile for Calvary lists 52 baptisms and primary worship service attendance of 658. The church gave $232,795, or 12.6 percent, through the Cooperative Program from total undesignated receipts of $1,842,098.