Just in from the Baptist Press:
Richard Land, who led the transformation of the Southern Baptist Convention’s ethics entity during the denomination’s conservative resurgence, has announced he will retire next year after a quarter of a century of service as its president.
Land’s retirement as president of the Ethics & Religious Liberty Commission (ERLC) will be effective Oct. 23, 2013, he announced in a letter today (July 31) to the acting chairman of the entity’s board of trustees. His retirement is scheduled to take place 25 years from the date he assumed the ERLC’s presidency in 1988…
Land chose to announce his retirement nearly 15 months before its effective date to provide “plenty of time for an orderly transition for both the Commission and myself to the next phase of our respective future ministries,” he said in his letter to Richard Piles, acting chairman of the ERLC trustees. He described the ERLC’s ministry as “critically important for both Christ’s church and the nation,” saying, “I pledge to do everything in my power to make the transition to new leadership as smooth and seamless as possible.”
Read the rest here.