About Me
was an American pastor, author, and a three-term president of the Southern Baptist Convention (1979-1980 and 1986-1988). Supporters have described him as the apostle Paul of Southern Baptists.Rogers was born in West Palm Beach, Florida, and decided to enter into the Christian ministry at the age of nineteen. Rogers was ordained by Northwood Baptist Church in West Palm Beach. In 1972, he became the senior pastor of Bellevue Baptist Church in Memphis, where he remained until March 2005. During this period, the church's membership grew from 9,000 to 27,000, and the church moved into a new, megachurch facility.Rogers was instrumental in the Southern Baptist denomination's rightward shift that began in the late 1970s, as he was elected president of the organization during a theological controversy within the denomination. He published eighteen books and is featured on the internationally-available radio and television program, Love Worth Finding [1], which is broadcast in English and Spanish.In November 2005, Rogers contracted pneumonia of both lungs as a complication of colon cancer treatments, and died following a period of mechanical ventilation at the age of seventy-four.Dr. Rogers served three times as president of the Southern Baptist Convention, the largest American Protestant denomination with 16 million members. He was first elected to this post on a platform of biblical inerrancy, and under his leadership, the denomination shifted sharply rightward, firing liberal and moderate seminary professors, as well as requiring all employees of the denomination's seminaries and the national office to affirm their adherence to the Baptist Faith and Message, a document which Rogers later (when he was no longer president) succeeded in significantly revising. The denomination has remained staunchly conservative since Rogers' first term as president.Dr. Rogers is the only person to serve three times as SBC President (the bylaws limit serving to two consecutive terms; however, Dr. Rogers served one term in 1979 before stepping down, thus he was eligible to serve again).
